Team Interactions
In Autonomous Team Structure, we discussed how self-sufficient teams plan, implement, and deliver their respective software features independently. To enhance their productivity, we established three types of internal supporting teams and outlined their functions. This chapter highlights distinct approaches to how these software teams work together effectively.
Conway's Law
"Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure."
- Melvin E. Conway
"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler."
- Eric S. Raymond
"The architecture of the system gets cemented in the forms of the teams that develop it."
- Ruth Malan
"Someone who claims to be an [Software] architect needs both technical and social skills. They also need a remit that is broader than pure technology - they need to have a say in business strategies, organizational structures, and personnel issues."
- Allan Kelly
Conway's Law decrees that every software architecture ultimately mirrors the structure and communication practices of the team working on the software. It emphasizes the misconception that organizational structure and software architecture can be separated. No matter how strongly we mandate a certain architecture, the software structure will ultimately converge towards the department structure. This reality has been an inconvenience for software companies that organize their departments by discipline and enforce conservative reporting hierarchies.
Modern software companies leverage Conway's Law to their advantage. A strategy called the Inverse Conway Maneuver demands that we design our organization around the product, not the other way around. First, we design the software, and then we position autonomous teams in line with the software's modules. Assigning people and teams according to their software contributions reduces friction in software delivery.
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