Posts by Allen Cheung
Code is a Cultural Artifact
So I've been accused, more than once, of obsessing over organizational structures. Heck, I just waxed poetically about Conway's Law recently, and that was just after leading a couple of sessions at a conference on, specifically,…
Review: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
The power law. The Pareto Principle. Winner-takes-all. They all recognize an ecosystem where most of the benefits—and profits, as is often the case—accrues to a handful of individual entities, the theory suggesting that this type of uneven distribution…
Unpacking Conway's Law
I've been thinking a lot recently about organizational structure and design[1]. Eventually, I'm reminded and inevitably return to Conway's Law: Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose…
Review: Fifty Inventions that Shaped the Modern Economy
Inventions form many of the foundations of modern society. Many are easily recognizable from children's textbooks: the lightbulb, railroads, the printing press, the internet. Fifty Inventions that Shaped the Modern Economy explores a set of complementary inventions. This…
Parenthood :: Management
Does becoming a parent make for a better manager? I remember vividly when I first brought it up as a possibility. I was interviewing at a few companies after deciding to end my time at Square, and wanted to continue…
Strategic Paper
30 years in, and the electronic revolution that would bring about the end of scribing on dead timber seems to be perpetually another three decades away, if it even still exists as a goal for most people and offices. The…
