Software Design X-Rays

Combine Social and Technical Information

There’s a fine line between having enough people to complete a large task and the point where critical parts of the code turn into coordination bottlenecks. Conway’s law provides us with guidance, and in this chapter you learned how to measure coordination needs between both individuals and teams. While we won’t ever be able to put numbers on anything as complex as human interactions, we can still gather data that helps us ask the right questions.

Conway’s law in isolation isn’t enough, as team work is much more complex, and the main challenge is to combine code ownership where teams work relatively independently with shared and compelling goals rather than fostering artificial competition among the contributors. ...