Conway’s Law at a Distance

Conway’s Law at a Distance

Team-Building in a Distributed World

The recent rise of the "Microservices" meme, the continued push to improve agility and autonomy of software teams, and the increased likelihood that teams are spread across the globe are all related, even if they are at times in opposition to each other. They are all aspects of an adage first coined in 1968 by Mel Conway. "Conway’s Law" states: "Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure."

This talk looks at the history of Conway’s Law (and relevant corollaries) and provides advice & guidance on how we can learn from the last fifty years of research and experience. It looks at how distance affects communication within a group and helps us apply the results to create teams that produce the code we expect at the speed, level of complexity, and reliability necessary to succeed in today’s distributed world.

An internationally known author and lecturer, Mike Amundsen travels throughout the world consulting and speaking on a wide range of topics including distributed network architecture, Web application development, and other subjects.

In his role of Director of Architecture for the API Academy, Amundsen heads up the API Architecture and Design Practice in North America. He is responsible for working with companies to provide insight on how best to capitalize on the myriad opportunities APIs present to both consumers and the enterprise.

Amundsen has authored numerous books and papers on programming over the last 15 years. His most recent book is a collaboration with Leonard Richardson titled "RESTful Web APIs" published in 2013. His 2011 book, “Building Hypermedia APIs with HTML5 and Node”, is an oft-cited reference on building adaptable Web applications.

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