Organizational bottlenecks
On this page 9 topics
Overview
Topics
- Coordination costs
- team boundaries
- Conway's Law
Learn first
3 h of practice (estimate)
Learning outcomes
- Explain Conway's Law and the inverse Conway maneuver with examples.
- Measure coordination costs (cross-team dependencies, handoffs, wait times).
- Recommend team boundary changes that align with the target architecture, working with engineering managers.
- Recognize team cognitive-load limits (team topologies).
Lessons
Lab and exercises
Lab
SRA-018-LAB1 · Team design proposal
Outcomes: 1–4 · Time: ~2 h
- Analyze provided dependency data for Commerce 2030 teams: cross-team change share, wait times, and handoffs.
- Assess cognitive load for the teams at the bottleneck.
- Propose team boundary changes aligned with the Commerce 2030 context map, paired with the architecture changes needed.
- Present to role-played engineering managers; adjust to their constraints.
- Predict the reduction in measured dependencies and define how you will check it.
Acceptance: proposal reduces measured cross-team dependencies.
Exercises (case-based; six exercises)
| ID | Outcome | Task |
|---|---|---|
| SRA-018-EX01 | 1 | Explain Conway's Law with an example from the dependency data and describe how the inverse Conway maneuver would respond. |
| SRA-018-EX02 | 2 | From a table of tickets, compute each team's share of changes needing another team and identify the top bottleneck. |
| SRA-018-EX03 | 4 | Assess cognitive load of a team owning four domains and nine services and recommend actions. |
| SRA-018-EX04 | 3 | Propose a split for that team aligned with the context map, with interfaces and data ownership. |
| SRA-018-EX05 | 3 | Prepare the manager conversation: data, options, transition, and decisions needed from them. |
| SRA-018-EX06 | 1 | Critique a proposal that reorganizes teams but leaves the shared database unchanged. |
Show solutions
- EX01 A shared table between ordering and inventory teams that must agree on every release shows the mirror; the inverse maneuver gives each domain one owning team and a clear interface.
- EX02 Count changes per team, flag those needing another team, rank by wait time; the team most waited on is the bottleneck, but check why before acting.
- EX03 Load is high: split by subdomain, reduce services through consolidation or a platform capability, and limit on-call burden; move ownership before code.
- EX04 Pricing and promotions to one team, seller fees to the seller domain team; each owns its data and a published interface; predict fewer cross-team changes.
- EX05 Bring data, target architecture, two or three options, effect on people and careers, transition steps, and the decision needed; let managers own people decisions.
- EX06 Without changing the shared database the coupling persists and the new teams still coordinate; pair the team change with data ownership and interface steps.
Outcome 4 is also covered by the lab load assessment.
Workplace evidence: a team-boundary or ownership change you influenced and its effect.
Quiz
Outcomes: O1 Conway's Law and inverse Conway · O2 measuring coordination cost · O3 team boundary changes with managers · O4 cognitive load and team topologies.
A self-check for you: nothing is graded, saved or sent anywhere. Choose an answer, then check it. You can try again as often as you like.
Practical part
Six case exercises SRA-018-EX01 to EX06 plus the lab proposal presented to role-played managers. Pass: quiz at least 8/10, and a proposal review showing measured dependencies, alignment to the context map, manager constraints respected, and a predicted reduction in cross-team dependencies.
Common mistakes
Reorganizing without changing architecture (or the reverse); ignoring managers' constraints.
Assessment
Proposal review.
Workplace evidence
A team-boundary or ownership change you influenced and its effect.
Career relevance
Organizational change (STF-014).