Conway’s Law Teaches a Grim Lesson About AI in Product Development

When I first stumbled upon Conway’s Law, it was anything but intuitive to me. Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.Melvin E. Conway Why would an organizational structure of a company have anything to do with software architecture? After all, there are whole bodies of knowledge covering high- and low-level concepts of software development. Aren’t these things properly planned and executed? I mean, sure, in the details, there will always be a mess. However, in a grand scheme of things, the high-level design should be far more controllable than the law suggests. In retrospect, Conway’s Law is one of those things that, once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. Conway’s Law and Spotify Model Whenever Conway’s Law emerges in a discussion, my favorite example is Spotify. I’m a user since the beta. I know several people who worked there in leadership positions. Most of all, Spotify, at some…