Conways Law - the concept that your product resembles your org structure - is a double-edged sword. If your organization is intentionally structured to optimize your strengths, it’s great!

However, oftentimes organizations are the result of unintentional design; leading to accidental complexity and inability to maximize results.

Even when organizations are intentionally designed, they can optimize the wrong things - such as command and control, leading to clunky outcomes.

Why does this happen? Is it preventable? How can you tell if this is happening in your organization?!

The short answer is: YES!

In my current role as the Director of Engineering for our billion-dollar ads business, I and my team have been given the unique opportunity to redesign our organization for speed, collaboration and results.

We decided to put our principles into practice by using two system design principles to organize our 100-person team who support our hundreds of components: DDD (Domain Driven Design): “ a software development philosophy centered around the domain, or sphere of knowledge, of those that use it”; and BAPO (Business Architecture Process Organization): Jan Bosch’s expression of strategic organization design.

Join me to discuss a real-world case study in applying these principles and how it’s progressing 6 months in!

Learning Outcomes:

• Signs that you’re shipping your org structure and why that may be suboptimal
• What are DDD and BAPO; how they’re different from traditional system design
• Why DDD and BAPO can lead to a more optimal organization and better outcomes
• Practical steps to get started regardless of your role

Nivia is a technologist with 20 years of engineering and leadership experience.

Her career path has included nearly every role in tech; but her true passion is inspiring people to do their best work.