Conway's Law expresses Melvin Conway's observation that we are doomed to design systems that mirror the shapes of our organizations. Forward-thinking companies like Amazon and Netflix use Conway's Law to their advantage. They structure their organizations to reflect the kinds of systems they want to create. Conway also, though, observed that designing a system is just the beginning; it also needs continual redesign. He stressed the importance of organizational flexibility to effective design. How can we achieve this flexibility without descending into re-org madness? This talk will explore the relationship between organizations and systems, and present an approach that treats the design of services, systems, and organizations as continuous and inseparable. View videos at: https://vimeo.com/channels/mxconf

2. #MX16
Jeff Sussna
IT Service Design Consultant, Ingineering.IT
The Self-Designing
Organization
NEXT PRESENTATION

3. The Self-Designing Organization
@jeffsussna

4. Me: IT consultant/design thinker
Practice: help digital businesses deliver continuous value
Career: development + QA + operations
Background: liberal arts

6. What happens when we apply design to IT itself?

17. “…organizations which design systems are constrained to
produce designs which are copies of the communication
structures of these organizations.”

18. The “Reverse Conway”

20. Conway’s Corollary

21. “…given any system design, someone will find a better one
to do the same job.”

23. “flexibility of organization is important to effective design”

25. Microservices and pizzas offer part of the answer

32. The service economy is different

35. How do we design/operate for service?

36. Service exposes the sausage factory

37. “…delivering value by facilitating outcomes customers want
to achieve…”
-“ITSM Introductory Overview ITIL v3”

38. Service exposes the sausage factory

39. A service is a set of promises

40. Promise: a strongly stated intention to provide benefit

41. Service exposes the sausage factory

42. Promises sometimes get broken

43. Promises unify design and operations

44. Service exposes the sausage factory

45. Promises unify systems and organizations

46. Service exposes the sausage factory

47. Promises enable organizational flexibility

51. This is what I do -> this is how I help