Account for Conway's Law in your Architecture

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~170 word | ~1 min read

Your organizational structure impacts how you can use your tools.

The job of custom software is to build new verbs for the business. And Enterprise Architects design new capabilities for the future. But the best local optimization won’t magically make the line more effective. Buying the fanciest Power Drill can’t magically improve productivity.

Instead, we need a more holistic approach. People only get value from a tool when they use it well. People only use tools they understand well. Conway’s Law observes that organizations build tools that mirror their structure. To do otherwise would be to create cognitive friction. Do we account for the structure of use when we introduce new tools?

The nearer the match of tool to team, the more effective the use. New capabilities demand new and different tools. But too different, and we lose effectiveness. So we must evolve the organization’s shape along with it’s tools. And that is an entirely other discipline from Architecture. To create our future organization, we must also help them change.