Succeeding with Agile

Chapter 10. Team Structure

It is perhaps a myth, but an enduring one, that people and their pets resemble one another. The same has been said of products and the teams that build them.

The system being produced will tend to have a structure that mirrors the structure of the group that is producing it, whether or not this was intended. One should take advantage of this fact and then deliberately design the group structure so as to achieve the desired system structure. (Conway 1968; commonly referred to as “Conway’s Law”)

If it is true that a product reflects the structure of the team that built it, then an important decision for any Scrum project is how to organize those individuals into teams. Factoring into this decision are considerations ...