Alois Ruf and Melvin Conway agree: design by committee doesn’t work. If you want great, it takes one person’s vision, the character to stay true to an idea, and the persistence to make it happen.
Listen to Alois Ruf on Jay Leno’s Garage:
Jay Leno: “To me, the best cars are always one person’s vision. When I was growing up, it was Duesenberg, it was Porsche, it was W. O. Bentley, it was Gordon Murray, it was yourself—people who have one idea of what it should be, and they are usually right! Cars designed by committee, uh…”
Alois Ruf: “Committees don’t work. It takes one head, and [they have] to be persistent to make it happen.”
Design by committee doesn’t work, and Melvin Conway agrees.
Melvin Conway wrote a paper in 1967: “How Do Committees Invent?” The gist of it became known as Conway’s Law.
Conway’s law: “Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.”
So when it comes to Agile transformations, don’t leave it up to a committee, or your transformation “journey” will only take you to a mere copy of your current org chart.
If you want a paradigm shift, only one thing matters:
Who is your Chief Agility Officer?
