The Reverse Conway Manouvre

Conway’s law came up in a conversation I was having recently. If you’re not familiar with it, Google it. I’ll restate it this way…

Conway’s law came up in a conversation I was having recently. If you’re not familiar with it, Google it. I’ll restate it this way: Organizations tend to go to market with products and services that are patterned on their communication structures.

An obvious example of this would be a local government web site with primary navigation organized by department. Another: A checkout process with separate steps for entering bill-to and ship-to information. Does this meet the immediate needs of most customers? Or does it reflect how the organizations are structured or how the technology works? More delightful examples here: https://lnkd.in/dsem9WNr

One of my favorite product management slogans is “Don’t ship your org chart” (credited to Steven Sinofsky.) Read up on Conway and you’ll learn that it’s actually the social aspects of organizations — how they communicate — that drives these outcomes. The org chart happens to be a map to how this communication usually happens. That’s great news, because many of us have a greater ability to impact collaboration than organization.

A powerful idea arising from Conway’s law is called the “Reverse Conway Manouvre.” I love saying that so much. Here’s a good article about it: https://lnkd.in/duQRV6N2.

There’s plenty more great writing on this, so Google it. The general idea is that if Conway’s law is true (and it is!) then it should work in reverse. Focusing on the way our teams collaborate and communicate should be a highly leveraged way of impacting the quality of our work as an organization.

Does it seem obvious? To anybody who has tried to change the way an organization builds products, it is not. The habits that companies form for how they create products can be very difficult and expensive to change, but the rewards can be even greater.

Goal-setting is a very common way of trying to improve the quality of product work. And that is surely effective sometimes. I think it would be valuable to experiment with evaluating how teams communicate and collaborate as part of the goal-setting process.

A couple of other related issues: Goal-setting at the team level leads to resource contention when teams are dependent on each other. Have we designed team collaboration to support this, or undermine it? Over time, product teams gain focus and “silos” can develop. Does our approach to collaborate ensure that silos aren’t undermining the effectiveness of our culture?

A “reverse Conway manouvre” can be a long-term strategy, not just an overnight gambit. Focus attention on how teams collaborate and communicate, and make that process stronger than your silos.