Systems image their design groups

Conway’s Law dictates that organizations that design systems necessarily produce designs that reflect their communication structures:

The basic thesis of this article is that organizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.^[1]

Thus, to the degree that organizational communication is constrained to lines of command, patterns of communication will reflect the administrative structure:

To the extent that organizational protocol restricts communication along lines of command, the communication structure of an organization will resemble its administrative structure. This is one reason why military-style organizations design systems which look like their organization charts.^[2]

#systems #communication

See also:

• Large systems tend to disintegrate during development
• Systems Theory studies the relationships and structure of systems
• Systems Thinking perceives the relationships and structure of complex systems