Conway's Law: Software Architecture Mirrors Organizational Structure
A prevailing consensus among software architects is the significance of Conway's Law: any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. This means software architecture often reflects the development team's organization. Ignoring this leads to conflicts between system architecture and organizational structure, increasing development complexity. The article explores three strategies for addressing Conway's Law: ignoring, accepting, and the Inverse Conway Maneuver (adjusting the organizational structure to guide software architecture). The author emphasizes that system architecture and organizational structure evolution should be synchronized throughout software development, and suggests using methods like Domain-Driven Design to aid organizational design.