Conway’s Law
Etymology
Named for computer scientist Melvin Conway, whose 1967 paper "How Do Committees Invent?" argued that a system’s structure copies the communication paths of its makers. Fred Brooks cited and christened it "Conway’s law" in "The Mythical Man-Month" (1975). The name is an eponym drawn from that observation.
noun phrase · /KON-wayz law/
Any system’s design ends up mirroring the communication structure of the organization that built it.
What it names
Use it to predict — or diagnose — why software, products, and documents come out shaped like the org chart: the seams in the artifact fall where the teams don’t talk.
Example
The checkout flow had four incompatible styles because four separate teams owned it — pure Conway’s law.
Related idea
Complements Gall’s law: Conway’s law says what shape a system takes (its builders’), while Gall’s law says how a working one must grow (from a simpler working one).