For reference (as per Wikipedia):
Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.
— Melvin E. Conway
Imagine interpreting that as advice on how you should try to design things, lol.
Tbf, I think most of the post is just typical LinkedIn fluff, but I didn't want to take the poor fellow out of context.
The original post advocates for a holistic, collaborative approach; management and technical experts should be working together to align technical and organizational structure. I fully agree with that view (and I'm not a manager).
There is more than enough "shit managers say" material out there, but this is not it.
Totally fair, and I'm actually pretty happy to see someone steelman the LinkedIn guy's point. Surprisingly thoughtful discussion here for a meme sub, lol.
I still think most of his post is pretty vapid ("org structure and technology should both support business goals," yeah duh), but the content isn't really objectionable... He's just kind of... not saying much, I think. That's what I meant by "LinkedIn fluff."
What makes me smirk is invoking (and IMO, misunderstanding) Conway's Law, although that was more an issue with the comic than the post (he talks about "Conway's Law" directly in the comments, but I didn't post those).
The takeaway from Conway's Law isn't supposed to be "when you're deciding how to architect a software system, make sure to conform to the org structure." It's that the system structure will tend to mimic the communication structure (and possibly vice-versa), which may be good or bad, and you need to manage that tendency.
It's certainly not "managers are the real software architects," lol.
Thanks for your perspective. I wonder what your opinion of the comic part is?
Nowhere in that text does it say "managers are the real software architects". What it does say is "what managers do affects software architecture". Sure you can extrapolate that to delusions of grandeur, but if you take into account the explicit call for collaboration it is much more likely what was meant is more along the lines of "we can mess things up if we ignore the architecture, so let's talk to the real software architects before making org decisions".
About the comic: That one does have the line "management designs software architecture", much closer to the negative interpretation; but that too can be interpreted in a more positive way as "... and we are not good at that, so let's make sure to bring in the people who are good at it at important points".