Conway’s Law and Breaking Down Dev Team Silo

How can we break down dev team silos for increased communication and a better-quality end product? Reversing Conway's Law is one way to go about it, and today's guest has a wealth of experience on how to do just that! 

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Krishna Bala is the Senior VP of Engineering at Proscia, a medical imaging startup that is fighting cancer with AI-enabled Digital Pathology. 

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Using the case study of Proscia itself, Krishna outlines the benefits of building common elements across teams and handling change management when reorganizing roles and teams.

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There is also an in-depth explanation of Conway's Law as well, for those tech companies looking to break down the barriers to better communication between their teams and not be limited in their output by their organizational structure. 

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Higher quality product by design awaits. We just have to reverse a law to do it. Krishna's knowledge of how to build your organization to achieve its goals will surely be appreciated. Please join us.

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"As humans, I think we're just comfortable staying in that hierarchy, staying in our own little system. Work is hard enough, challenging enough that you basically say, 'Okay, this is my box; I'm going to innovate within that box'." ~ Krishna Bala

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In This Episode:

• 01:43 Why are silos bad? 
• 03:53 What is Conway's Law?
• 05:41 Reversing Conway's Law: what does that entail?
• 07:10 What good comes from breaking down siloes?
• 09:20 How is Krishna using this thinking in his work today?
• 13:00 Organizing a deliberate common core team 
• 14:20 Changing the tires while the car is moving!
• 15:20 Appreciating the importance of change management
• 21:27 Figuring out the release cadence for your common core team

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