Organizational Structure Conways Law, Conways Law And Digital Transformation Moving The Org Structure To Feature Teams

What is conways law.

William law mormon. Any organization that designs a system defined broadly will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organizations communication structure. Conways law is an adage stating that organizations design systems that mirror their own communication structure. His original wording was.

Over fifty years ago a mathematician and programmer named dr. Conways law states that the structure of a system always mirrors the structure of the organization that created it. Companies organize themselves and in turn design systems that mirror those organizations which in turn further solidify the organizational structure that was first put in place.

Conways law was not intended as a joke or a zen koan but as a valid sociological observation. His observation has become known as conways law and the collective experiences of both my colleagues and myself have time and again reinforced the truth of this statement. Melvin conway stated in a paper submitted to the harvard business review that organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.

Many years ago melvin conway had observed that how organizations were structured would have a strong impact on any systems they created. I captured an interesting passage from the archived page. It was originally formulated by programmer melvin conway more than 50 years ago who put it this way.

Conways law also plays a role in the time it takes to construct each of these systems. Any organization that designs a system defined broadly will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organizations communication structure. When theres a mismatch the system is very hard to build and maintain.

This hypothesis eventually became known as conways law. This module looks at how and why conways law works and shows how organizational structure impacts overall architecture. Any organization that designs a system defined broadly will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organizations communication structure.

Conways law is a phenomenon whereby organizations build systems that closely reflect their internal structures. Conways law is more guiding principle than physical property but its a good model to keep in your head as youre designing organizations or systems or trying. But thinking about conways law ive been wondering if software security assurance teams that arent part of a development organization might be doomed by the social boundaries of their.

These systems will integrate with each other in a way that mirrors the way these organizational departments communicate.