Focus group on Conway's Law

Organisers:

• Allan Kelly, allan@allankelly.net
• Lise Hvatum, hvatum1@sugar-land.oilfield.slb.com

Melvin Conway wrote in 1968 that:

“Any organization which designs a system (defined more broadly here than just information systems) will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure”.

In their recently published book “Organizational Patterns for Agile Software Development” Coplien & Harrison include a pattern named “Conway’s Law” where the solution calls on organizations to: “Make sure the organization is compatible with the product architecture”.

This focus group will look at Conway’s Law in more depth. Using the experiences of the participants we will explore the questions such as:

• How does organizational structure shape software and does software shape organizational structure?
• What happens if the architecture of the software or the business solution is incompatible with the organizational structure?
• Can software designers produce better software by moving beyond software designs mirroring organizational structure?
• What domain is Conway’s Law applicable to?
• Can we break out of Conway’s Law? - If so, how? If not, how should we use it to our advantage?

Participants are encouraged to read:

• Melvin Conway’s 1968 paper “How Do Committees Invent?”
• Coplien and Harrison’s 2004 pattern “Conway’s Law” - also to be found in Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development, 2004

Participants are invited to prepare a short position paper (no more than 1 page). Position papers are entirely optional.