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Conway's Law: The Link Between Organizational Structure and System Design

Conway's Law: An Introduction

Conway's Law is an IT theory created by computer scientist and programmer Melvin Conway in 1967. The theory states that "any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure." In other words, the way that an organization is structured will have a strong impact on the systems that it designs.

The Source of Conway's Law

The source of Conway's Law is an article written by Melvin Conway in 1968. The article was published in Datamation, one of the most important computer science magazines of the time. In the article, Conway argued that the communication structure of an organization will have a significant impact on the design of the systems that the organization produces. He supported this argument with a number of examples from the software industry.

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