[mrfredward]

>Is following Conway's law a bad thing, though

Is following the second law of thermodynamics a bad thing? I say so jokingly because thermo is a little more rigid, but I still think it's futile to fight Conway. After all, if you change your org structure to try to beat it, you're actually proving it.

It's not something to beat as much as it's something to inform decisions. Code should be architected with knowledge of how the organization is broken up, and orgs should be structured with knowledge of how that affects the technical side.

I guess all this is to agree with you and say...if breaking up modules in a certain way for small teams is effective for your organization, then it makes sense to do it.

[kpmah]

To add to that, I think the biggest thing to take away from Conway's law is that splitting teams of developers becomes a technical problem. If your goal is to efficiently build a product, technical expertise needs to go into that decision.

This is why I say Conway's law is a bad thing for modules (regardless of how inevitable it is): technical considerations are often not taken into account, and technical design is ossified by team structure.