Mirror, mirror, on the wall

You’re probably familiar with Conway’s Law, that “organizations which design systems … are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.” But did you know that there’s a tradition in academia spanning as far back as the 1960’s that has studied it in action?

Our understanding began in the traditions of organisational design, product design, and organisations-as-complex-systems. Conway’s Law is a separate tradition in technology, embracing our idioms and ways of storytelling.

But all three traditions point back to the same underlying concepts.

Conway’s Law has been studied across auto, aviation, software, banking, and healthcare. Each study has revealed how humans organise to build systems, and how those systems influence how we organise ourselves.

The results are not what you’d expect.

Transcript

1. Mirror, mirror,
   on the wall
   (abridged)
   Lindsay Holmwood
   

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2. What is mirroring?
   

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3. Two networks
   

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4. Organisational
   

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5. Technical
   

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6. Organisational Technical
   Mirror
   

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7. Two separate
   research traditions
   

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8. 1. Management
   Org design &
   orgs as complex
   systems
   

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9. 1. Management
   Product design &
   products as complex
   systems
   

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10. 2. Computer science
    Conway’s law
    

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

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12. “How Do Committees
    Invent?”
    Datamation magazine, April, 1968.
    

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13. Org design &
    orgs as complex
    systems
    

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14. The architecture of
    complexity
    Simon, 1962
    

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15. Organization design:
    an information
    processing view
    Galbraith, 1974
    

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16. Product design &
    products as complex
    systems
    

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17. On the Criteria To Be
    Used in Decomposing
    Systems into Modules
    D.L. Parnas, 1972
    

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18. Architectural Innovation: The
    Reconfiguration of Existing
    Product Technologies and the
    Failure of Established Firms
    Henderson & Clark, 1990
    

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19. Henderson & Clark’s
    framework for defining innovation
    Based on Schumpeter, 1942
    

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20. “In a complex system, the technical
    architecture and the division of labor
    will ‘mirror’ one another in the sense
    that the network structure of one will
    correspond to the structure of the other.”
    

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21. Hidden structure: Using
    network methods to map
    system architecture
    Baldwin, MacCormack, Rusnak, 2014
    

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22. https://youtu.be/_gbitnk95a0
    

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23. How do we
    apply this?
    

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24. When you
    should mirror
    

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25. When the
    environment is stable
    

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26. When you are
    exploiting

    existing opportunities
    

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27. When uncertainty
    is low
    

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28. When you
    should not mirror
    

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29. When the 

    environment is unstable
    

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30. When you are
    exploring
    new opportunities
    

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31. When you’re 

    working in 

    open source
    

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32. When uncertainty
    is high
    

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33. As uncertainty increases,
    the amount of
    information that must be
    processed by decision
    makers increases
    

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34. The org can respond by
    increasing the capacity to
    process information
    

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35. Creation of lateral relations:
    Direct contact
    Liaison roles
    Task forces
    Teams
    Integrating roles
    Managerial linking roles
    Matrix organisation
    devops
    

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36. Henderson & Clark’s
    framework for defining innovation
    Based on Schumpeter, 1942
    Mirror
    Don’t

    mirror
    

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37. Bibliography
    •
    “The mirroring hypothesis: theory, evidence, and exceptions” 

    Colfer, L. and Baldwin, C. (2016)
    •
    “Hidden structure: Using network methods to map system architecture” 

    Baldwin, C., MacCormack, A., and Rusnak, J. (2014)
    •
    “Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product
    Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms” 

    Henderson, R. and Clark, K. (1990)
    •
    “Organization design: an information processing view” 

    Galbraith, J. (1974)
    •
    “On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules” 

    Parnas, D.L. (1972)
    •
    “The architecture of complexity” 

    Herbert, S. (1962)
    

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38. Stock photos from
    Other images
    http://meekrosoft.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/conway.png
    http://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/JdwAAOSwTf9ZUEaB/s-l225.jpg
    Fonts
    Junction from League of Movable Type
    Fanwood from League of Movable Type
    

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