Is Conway's Law just a hunch? Or is it a law? Conway didn't include a proof in 1968.

However, decades later, research from the automotive/aerospace industries and the software industry tells a different story.

If organisations are misaligned with the product architecture, they will have quality problems and decision latency.

Part 2 of "Beyond the Shades of Conway's Law" is out now:

Validation: The Research and Reality Check

#ConwaysLaw #SystemsThinking

https://thinkinglabs.io/articles/2026/06/20/beyond-shades-of-conways-law-validation.html

Published: Beyond the Shades of Conway's Law - Foundations: The Origin & The Mirroring Principle

Two years after my talk at #DDDEU, I finally wrote up my learnings.

This is part 1, the foundations:
- Conway's thesis
- similar observations in the Product Design and Organisation Design community

All based on Simon's The Architecture of Complexity.

With influences from Emery & Trist's Causal Textures.

All brought together with The Mirroring Principle.

#conwayslaw

https://thinkinglabs.io/articles/2026/06/07/beyond-shades-of-conways-law-foundations.html

Your org chart may be designing your software more than your architects are.

Learn how to help teams diagnose architecture at the source.

https://jeffbailey.us/blog/2026/05/13/how-do-i-use-conways-law/

#SoftwareArchitecture #ConwaysLaw #TechnicalLeadership #SystemsThinking #TeamTopologies #DistributedSystems #Architecture

You can’t out-engineer a dysfunctional communication structure.

Learn why tooling alone cannot solve architecture problems.

https://jeffbailey.us/blog/2026/05/12/what-is-conways-law/

#ConwaysLaw #Software #Technology #Programming #SoftwareDevelopment #Coding #SoftwareEngineering

» Your products will reflect your organisational structure (Conway’s Law)

» You can structure your teams around a central function, or as self-contained business units

» Periodically re-evaluate the right mix of innovation and optimisation for your organisation

#ThoughtProvoker  

Commons based: You have opportunity to introduce a post-capitalist society

Default public: Sorry, it is #hypercapitalism for you. You lose.

https://coding.social

#SX #SocialCoding #ConwaysLaw

@doopledi .. and all those upholding it, unable to step out of it, as they are part of it. Including all us commoners by default.

To get to a new alternative system, you have to cheat #ConwaysLaw at scale, keep it at bay for prolonged periods, while you nurture, care, foster, introduce, and mature a viable alternative until it takes firm root and can fend for its own :)

Resisting Conway’s law through more thoughtful mapping

https://duncanstephen.net/resisting-conways-law-through-more-thoughtful-mapping/