Defeating Conway's Law

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:23:49 +0200

Try using a platform to combat Conway’s Law and organizational friction caused by too many groups/silos.

This matters because it removes the structural excuse for fragmentation. When a single platform surfaces all the controls a unified team needs, there is no longer a technical reason to keep five separate teams in five separate rooms. The organisational argument for siloes collapses alongside the technical one.

Conway’s Law says that a system will be shaped - organization sub-divided - as a replica of the orgnonzatikn that built the system.

(Yes, I know this is a misreading of the “communication structures” part of Conway’s but this is the use the street has found.)

Most people will tell you that people eat technology for breakfast. You can’t change how people work or how a (large) company is structured by simply installing some new system.

As Harry Thambi outlines, I’m not sure that’s always the case. When a new technology removes the need for specialist teams because it automates and removes the toil of the people running the technology, you have a chance to collapse the groups, to have less silos, and, thus, defeat Conway’s Law.

That requires a truly integrated platform. Interested in one, why not TryTanzu.ai?

🔗 Broadcom Knight’s partner blog: Silo busters - a unified platform needs a unified team - Broadcom News and Stories

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Defeating Conway's Law