Your Code as a Crime Scene

Know Your Knowledge Distribution

A while ago, I worked with a large development organization. We were hundreds of developers organized in multiple divisions and teams. To make it work, each team was responsible for one subsystem. The subsystems all had well-documented interfaces. However, sometimes the API had to change to support a new feature. That’s where things started to get expensive.

You’re probably reminded of Conway’s law from the previous chapter. The team organization was closely aligned to the system architecture. As a consequence, the communication worked well—at least on the surface. When we needed to change an API, we knew which team we should talk to. The problem was that these changes often rippled through the system; a change ...