Function Follows Forming: A Short Introduction to Conway’s Law

Conway’s Law is shorthand for the insight that there is a corellation between a company’s internal structure and the results it delivers to end users. It is named after the computer scientist Melvin Conway who described the principle in 1967z

[O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.

— Melvin E. Conway, How Do Committees Invent?

The core insight is that the structure of a system mirrors in important ways the structure of the processes used to build the system. The question of causality is separate from the question of existence.

Studies have been published that confirm the correlation between communication systems in software development processes and communication systems in the software.

Companies frequently use Conway’s Law to help them organize development teams by designing the software architecture and changing the structure of the organization tasked with building the software to match the design.

The correlation appears to be manipulable from both directions. Change the software design and the design processes will adapt. Change the design processes and the software processes will be adapted.