Conway’s Law and Cross Functional Teams

Conway’s Law teaches us that the systems we design mirror the communication structures of our organizations.

Melvin Conway discovered this back in 1967. The architecture of the systems being designed tended to mirror the organizational organization that created them.

If your teams are organized by specialty—frontend, backend, QA, design—your systems will reflect those silos. Each group becomes an island, passing work back and forth. The result? Delays, misunderstandings and potentially an us vs them culture. This is where Agile flips the script with cross-functional teams.

Instead of grouping by skill set, you build teams with all the expertise needed to deliver value: developers, designers, testers, and more. These teams collaborate daily, sharing insights and solving problems together. Why does this work so well?

✅ Faster delivery: Less waiting for handoffs.

✅ Cohesion: Teams build features as a whole, not in disconnected pieces.

✅ Stronger ownership: Everyone shares accountability for the outcome.

These teams don’t just produce better systems—they create stronger, more innovative organizations. When we design our teams intentionally, we can shape systems that are cohesive, responsive, and more closely aligned with what the user will ultimately appreciate.