There are laws that seem so obvious once you think about them that you wonder why no one ever looked for a solution or even thought that something had to be done about them. Melvin Conway’s law, established in 1968, is one such law. He did not claim to revolutionize the science of management, but simply to describe a phenomenon that anyone with a modicum of objectivity would immediately recognize: systems designed by an organization always resemble that organization.
Or, to put it in his own words:
“Organizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations”.
Products betray the structure, silos, vision of the organization, work, and management philosophy of the company that designs them. In other words, every organization builds its tools in its own image.
Conway did not pass judgment on this, merely observing that what he saw in software development applies to just about everything: the product is the structure made visible. The code is a mirror of the organization, the process a confession of culture.
In short:
- Conway’s Law states that systems designed by an organization replicate its communication structure, revealing its silos, culture, and internal workings.
- Marshall McLuhan anticipated this idea by emphasizing that tools shape their users after being shaped by them, establishing a property of influence between humans and technology.
- Today, businesses no longer design their own tools and processes: they adopt solutions designed by others, which reverses Conway’s Law: it is now the organizations that adapt to the tools.
- Each tool conveys an implicit vision of work and shapes behaviors and practices by imposing a certain logic, often foreign to the culture and specificities of the business that adopts it.
- To regain their autonomy, organizations must actively rethink their conception of work and no longer view tools as neutral standards, but as cultural and managerial choices.
McLuhan before Conway
Four years earlier, in 1964, Marshall McLuhan had already formulated the philosophical version of this observation. “We shape our tools, then our tools shape us“. It wasn’t yet management, but the logic was the same: our relationship with technology is never neutral.
In fact, he explained that every tool is an extension of a human organ or one of its functions, and that ultimately, we create tools to do things better or faster; they extend our actions and end up changing the way we act and think.
Conway gives the industrial version: what McLuhan saw between man and machine, he observes between the organization and its systems. In both cases, the form of the product always ends up reshaping that of the producer, as in a loop system.
Businesses have stopped designing their own tools
Except that between 1964 and today, something has changed. In both McLuhan’s and Conway’s equations, there was one central player: the designer. Tools were designed by those who would use them, and systems were built by the organizations that would operate them.
But this link has been broken because businesses no longer design their own tools : they buy them from others whose job it is to make tools for others. They no longer imagine their processes, but install software that will lead them down a certain path, or even force them down a certain path, and ultimately, the organization of work is no longer thought out internally, but is virtually delivered turnkey (To manage is to design and How management let systems do the thinking for them).
They believe they are equipping themselves from a technological point of view, but they are being conditioned intellectually and managerially.
Conway’s law is thus reversed, and it is no longer the systems that resemble the organization, but the organizations that end up resembling the systems they adopt. The systems were not designed for them and for what makes them unique (Efficiency vs. uniqueness: the false dilemma of operations).
Importing work philosophies
Each tool conveys an implicit way of thinking about work. This is not visible in the interface, but in the design choices: what can be done, what cannot be done, what is simple, what is complicated, standard workflows and configurations that sometimes cannot be changed, except by paying more, sometimes for specific development.
For example, management software conveys a certain idea of control and hierarchy, an employee tool establishes the requirement for permanent availability as the norm in the workplace, and CRM locks customer relations into the logic of the pipeline it imposes. Each tool does not simply serve a purpose, but defines what is conceivable.
When a business adopts a tool, it unknowingly adopts the philosophy of those who designed it. But the fact is that these designers do not share its history, culture, identity, or business logic, because they are other organizations that were born out of a vision and have their own culture, if only because of their geographical origin, with their own ideas of performance and management efficiency.
In the end, we believe we are gaining in efficiency, but this often comes at the cost of a loss of consistency.
Conway’s Law today
Conway said that organizations that design systems always end up creating systems that resemble them, but today we should say that “Organizations end up resembling the tools they use, especially when they have not been involved in their design“.
Tools shape behavior, behavior dictates the organization of work, which becomes indisputable since “the tool does not allow us to do otherwise.”
Regaining control over work design
The real issue is therefore not technological but cultural, and it is more a question of intention than of tools. McLuhan warned us: we become what we make, and Conway reminded us: what we make resembles us.
The problem today is that we no longer make anything. Taking back control means deliberately choosing the working methods, operating procedures, and work design that we adopt, understanding that each tool embodies a worldview, and that ignoring this means succumbing to it.
Organizations are not doomed to resemble their tools, but to avoid this, they must stop confusing them with solutions.
A tool is never neutral: it is an act of management disguised as a purchase.
Bottom Line
Being modern does not mean keeping pace with tools, but rather maintaining control over what they impose. An organization that no longer designs its own structure and vision of work and operations always ends up obeying the logic of those who designed them for them. And in this case, the manager becomes nothing more than stewardship.
To answer your questions…
In 1968, Melvin Conway observed that every organization designs systems in its own image. The structure of a product reflects the way teams communicate and collaborate. Without judgment, he shows that internal culture, silos, and hierarchy are directly reflected in the tools and processes developed.
In the past, businesses designed their own tools, but today they buy them. As a result, it is no longer the systems that resemble the organization, but the organization that adapts to the systems. Software imposes its own logic, methods, and working models, influencing culture without us even realizing it.
Each tool embodies a vision of work: control, hierarchy, employee collaboration, or performance. Using software means adopting the philosophy of those who designed it. A business that does not consciously choose its tools ends up thinking and acting according to values that are not its own.
McLuhan stated: “We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us”. Conway applies this principle to organizations: their systems reflect their structure, and then transform it. Both show that technology influences as much as it serves.
By considering each technological choice as a management decision. The first step is to define your vision of the work, then choose the tools that will serve that vision. A modern organization does not imitate the logic of its software: it remains in control of what the software imposes.
Image credit: Image generated by artificial intelligence via ChatGPT (OpenAI)
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