"Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce system which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations"
Conway, M.E. "How do Committees Invent?", Datamation, (14) 4, April 1968. pp28-31.
For investments in enterprise architecture to pay off, they must be based on a clear understanding of the organization. Whatever approach you choose to implement your enterprise strategy, an understanding of Conway's Law can help to make your alignment efforts successful.
Conway's Law Revisited: Successfully Aligning Enterprise Architecture, May 1, 2002, David Dikel and David Kane.
Organizational politics is essential to the effectiveness of an architect. Architectures have many and diverse stakeholders. Often they are used across organizational boundaries, by other projects, divisions, and even other companies. To gain and maintain the sponsorship of management and the enthusiastic support of other key influencers, you need to do a good deal of influencing yourself.
Organizational Politics - Architect Competency Elaboration, Bredemeyer Consulting 2002.
The rule that the organisation of the software and the organisation of the software team will be congruent; originally stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler".
Melvin Conway, an early proto-hacker, wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called SAVE. The name "SAVE" didn't stand for anything; it was just that you lost fewer card decks and listings because they all had SAVE written on them.
Free Online Dictionary of Computing
In any organization there is one person who knows what is going on. That person must be fired. (source)
Cunningham's Wiki on Conway's Law
Problem, context, forces, solution, resulting context and design rationale.
Bell Labs, 1995
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