Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.

Quote of the Week 48

"Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."
― Melvin Conway (Conway's Law)

In short:    "The product of any group reflects the structure of the group."

Even shorter:        "Architecture follows Organization"

Triggered by the reference to a variant of Conway's Law in Fred Brooks's renowned book "The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering" (see quote of last week for a reference to Brooks's Law).

The original quote was used by Martin Fowler in his noteworthy October 2022 article on the same subject: 

"Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure."

Fowler states:

"Important enough to affect every system I've come across, and powerful enough that you're doomed to defeat if you try to fight it."

[LinkedIn]