Conway's Law

project, humour The rule that the organisation of the

software and the organisation of the software team will be

congruent; originally stated as "If you have four groups

working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler".

Melvin Conway, an early proto-hacker, wrote an assembler for

the Burroughs 220 called SAVE. The name "SAVE" didn't stand

for anything; it was just that you lost fewer card decks and

listings because they all had SAVE written on them.

[Jargon File]