Understanding and Applying Conway's Law

In this episode of The Product Handbook, we explore Conway’s Law — the idea that the way your teams communicate will directly shape the systems they build.

Originally introduced in 1968 (and still haunting engineering teams today), Conway’s Law isn’t just a quirky observation — it’s a powerful lens for understanding why product and technical decisions often reflect internal silos, not intentional design.

We’ll dive into examples of how organizational structure leaks into system architecture, why this matters for product managers, and how to use the Inverse Conway Maneuver to flip the script: shaping your team to design better systems — not the other way around.

If you've ever shipped a product that looked like a committee meeting... this one’s for you.