Laws of organizations and projects

These are short restatements of some famous and not-so-famous adages and heuristics.

• Conway’s law: product structure reflects the producers’ communication structure
• Gall’s law: a viable complex system isn’t designed from scratch; it evolves from a viable simple system
• Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” (Marilyn Strathern)
• Iron law of oligarchy, the: every organization develops a ruling elite. (Example: “Ex-Valve employee describes ruthless internal politics at ‘self-organizing’ companies”.)
• Keith’s law: “In a complex system, the cumulative effect of a large number of small optimizations is externally indistinguishable from a radical leap.” (Venkatesh Rao)
• Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy: bureaucratic organizations become controlled by people working in the interest of the bureaucracy itself
• Shirky principle, the: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” (Kevin Kelly)