Organization and Architecture

Organization and Architecture
Kevin Goldsmith
Chief Technology Officer

@kevingoldsmith #organdarch
Conway’s Law

Datamation
April, 1968

–Melvin Conway
“Organizations which design systems... are constrained
to produce designs which are copies of the
communication structures of these organizations.”

–simpler restatement
“Any piece of software reflects the organizational
structure that produced it.”

–Eric Raymond’s restatement of Conway’s Law
“If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get
a 4-pass compiler.”

–Cheatham's Amendment to Conway's Law
“If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler,
there will be N-1 passes. Someone in the group has to be
the manager.”

Server
Core Library
Platform Platform Platform Platform
Infrastructure

Server
Core Library
Infrastructure
VP
client
director
client
manager
client
manager
client
manager
client
manager
server
director
core
manager
infra
director
server
manager
server
manager

But we write software
differently now!

“Speaking as a mathematician might, we would say that
there is a homomorphism from the linear graph of a system
to the linear graph of its design organization.”
The homomorphic force

In abstract algebra, a homomorphism is a structure-
preserving map between two algebraic structures (such as
groups, rings, or vector spaces).
Homomorphism

By Hagmann P, Cammoun L, Gigandet X, Meuli R, Honey CJ, et al. - File:Medial surface of cerebral
cortex - gyri.png, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8636113

Server
Core Library
Infrastructure
VP
client
client client clientclient
servercore infra
server server

“…products tend to “mirror” the architectures of the
organizations in which they are developed. This dynamic occurs
because the organization’s governance structures, problem
solving routines and communication patterns constrain the space
in which it searches for new solutions. “
Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test
of the “Mirroring” Hypothesis MacCormack, Baldwin, Rusnak - Harvard
Business School, 2008
The Mirroring Hypothesis

–Melvin Conway
“It is a natural temptation of the initial designer -- the
one whose preliminary design concepts influence the
organization of the design effort -- to delegate tasks
when the apparent complexity of the system approaches
his limits of comprehension. This is the turning point in
the course of the design. Either he struggles to reduce
the system to comprehensibility and wins, or else he
loses control of it. The outcome is almost predictable if
there is schedule pressure and a budget to be managed.”

Are we trapped by
Conway’s Law?

No.

but

The effort to work around Conway’s law is probably
more than you want to deal with.

My Experience

Director
client
manager
client
manager
client
manager
server
manager
core
manager
infra
director

Server
Core Library
iOS / Mac Android Web
Infrastructure

Server
Core Library
Infrastructure
FeatureTeam
FeatureTeam
FeatureTeam
FeatureTeam
FeatureTeam
FeatureTeam

Infrastructure/Operations
Feature Teams

Working with the
homomorphic force

Be Deliberate

Find communication bottlenecks that conflict with
architecture and eliminate them.

Design the organization to design the architecture.

–James O. Coplien and Neil B. Harrison,
Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development,
2004
“If the parts of an organization (e.g. teams, departments,
or subdivisions) do not closely reflect the essential parts
of the product, or if the relationship between
organizations do not reflect the relationships between
product parts, then the project will be in trouble. ...
Therefore: Make sure the organizations is compatible
with the product architecture.”

The Reverse Conway Maneuver

–Sam Newman, Building Microservices
“Netflix learned from this [Amazon] example, and
ensured that from the beginning it structured itself
around small, independent teams, so that the services
they created would also be independent from each
other. This ensured that the architecture of the system
was optimized for speed of change. Effectively, Netflix
designed the organizational structure for the system
architecture it wanted.”

Tightly coupled teams = strong dependencies
between systems

“We find strong evidence to support the mirroring hypothesis.
In all of the pairs we examine, the product developed by the
loosely-coupled organization is significantly more modular
than the product from the tightly-coupled organization. “
Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A
Test of the “Mirroring” Hypothesis MacCormack, Baldwin, Rusnak -
Harvard Business School, 2008
The Mirroring Hypothesis

An alternate approach for a
more mature architecture

Organize around the product,
not the architecture

• Feature teams
• User journey teams
• By parts of the funnel
• Dynamic teams
Organization

More modular architecture and more shared code

Infrastructure
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature

Infrastructure
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
UserJourney
UserJourney
UserJourney
UserJourney
UserJourney

How we’re handling this at Avvo

Moved to full-stack teams

Building competency, then distributing

Choosing silos for velocity

From feature teams to user journey teams

In conclusion…

Homomorphic Force

Mirroring

It’s going to happen.

Go with it.

Questions?

Organization and Architecture

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