Conway's Law

"Any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure." 1

Melvin E. Conway
Conway's Law
Image: Jono Hey, Sketchplanations

The way teams and departments communicate, collaborate, and structure themselves has a direct influence on the systems, products, and processes they build. If two teams are building a part of an application separately, that system will probably have two components, introducing dependencies, and additional communication overhead.

Agile teams aim to be cross-functional, autonomous, and collaborative. However, if the organization's structure enforces silos (e.g., separate teams for development, testing, and operations), this can hinder an Agile team's ability to deliver quickly and collaboratively. The systems or products these teams create will likely reflect these same silos, leading to fragmented or inefficient solutions.

Scenario

An organization has a traditional structure where teams are siloed by function:

  • Backend team focuses only on server-side code.
  • Frontend team works on the UI.
  • Database team manages databases and queries.
  • QA team tests abd vverifies the system.

If these teams operate independently with minimal communication, the product will likely end up with clear boundaries between frontend, backend, and database systems. This could result in inefficiencies like:

  • Poor integration:
    • A frontend change might require significant coordination with backend and database teams, delaying delivery.
  • Inflexible design:
    • Each team optimizes for its own needs without considering the broader system, making changes costly or cumbersome.
  • Bottlenecks:
    • Dependencies on other teams can block progress, violating Agile principles of delivering value quickly.

Addressing Conway's Law in Agile Organizations

To counteract these issues, organizations can:

  1. Reorganize teams around value streams or customer outcomes rather than technical components. For example, a cross-functional team might own the entire customer journey for a specific feature, including frontend, backend, and database responsibilities.
  2. Promote open communication and collaboration by using Agile ceremonies like Daily Scrums, Retrospectives, System Demos, and cross-team syncs.
  3. Adopt DevOps practices, where the same team is responsible for development and operations, ensuring end-to-end ownership and reducing silos.

Summary

Before adopting Agile, Conway's Law resulted in a disjointed system reflecting functional silos. After the transition, the team's new cross-functional structure improves communication and results in a more cohesive, user-friendly system architecture.

Conway's Law reminds Agile teams and organizations to design their communication and team structures intentionally to align with the systems and outcomes they aim to achieve. Cross-functional Agile teams naturally encourage simpler, modular, and user-centered designs because their communication patterns directly shaped the systems they build.