Five Laws

Conway's Law # Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. — Melvin Conway, 1968 Hyrum's Law # With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody. — Hyrum Wright Parkinson's Law # Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. — C. Northcote Parkinson, The Economist, 1955 Amdahl's Law # The speedup of a program using multiple processors is limited by the fraction of the program that must run sequentially. — Gene Amdahl, 1967 Little's Law # The long-run average number of items in a stable system equals the average arrival rate multiplied by the average time an item spends in the system: L = λW. — John Little, 1961