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.)

See also