Independence, autonomy, and too many small teams

Re:Independence, autonomy, and too many small teams by pm on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @07:19AM (#23985460)

The OP is describing Conway's Law, and shows that half the battle is being able to define the problem space in a way that minimises communication and maximises utility. As such, it could be inferred that beginning with a monolithic organisation, and splitting off a new team at the appropriate time when a useful problem space had been defined could be a possible best practice, assuming the organisation was flexible enough.

Food for thought, at least.

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Re:Independence, autonomy, and too many small teams by kislayverma on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @07:50AM (#23985609)

That is well put, and I'm going steal some of those words in the follow-up I'm writing. I essentially feel that teams should grow when tech and process initiatives have led to creation of a whole new problem space that can be explored independently.

Consciously applying Conway's to identify communication boundaries sounds like a good way to get there.

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Re:Independence, autonomy, and too many small teams by pm on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @08:18AM (#23985798)

Thanks! Indeed, it's the interfaces that are hardest to define. I don't know a good heuristic to determine it I'm afraid - everything I've ever done was on intuition.

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Re:Independence, autonomy, and too many small teams by hinkley on Thursday July 30, 2020 @03:11AM (#23995476)

I think in general we underestimate the power of the B-tree, and this is but another example.

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