A Decade of Conway's Law: A Literature Review from 2003-2012

More than forty years ago, Melvin Conway published his seminal paper on the relationship between software architecture and development organizations, a phenomenon now known as "Conway's Law." We reviewed the literature to see how Conway's Law has been interpreted and used over the past decade. In particular, we looked at the types of organizations to which people have applied Conway's Law and the behaviors that people consider to be prescribed or proscribed by Conway. This pilot study attempts to articulate many of the views currently held within the software engineering community regarding Conway's Law. By doing so we hope to facilitate further meaningful studies of Conway.