inverse-conway

# Inverse Conway Maneuver Skill

## When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

- **Inverse Conway tasks** - Working on align architecture and team structure using inverse conway maneuver
- **Planning or design** - Need guidance on Inverse Conway approaches
- **Best practices** - Want to follow established patterns and standards

## Overview

Apply inverse Conway maneuver to deliberately design team structure for desired architecture.

## MANDATORY: Documentation-First Approach

Before applying inverse Conway:

1. **Invoke `docs-management` skill** for architecture-team alignment
2. **Verify Conway patterns** via MCP servers (perplexity)
3. **Base guidance on Team Topologies and DDD literature**

## Conway's Law

```text
Conway's Law:

"Organizations which design systems are constrained to
produce designs which are copies of the communication
structures of these organizations."
                                    — Melvin Conway, 1968

IMPLICATION:
┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐
│   Team A    │    │   Team B    │    │   Team C    │
└──────┬──────┘    └──────┬──────┘    └──────┬──────┘
       │                  │                  │
       ▼                  ▼                  ▼
┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐
│ Component A │◄──►│ Component B │◄──►│ Component C │
└─────────────┘    └─────────────┘    └─────────────┘

If teams communicate, their components will integrate.
If teams don't communicate, their components won't integrate well.
```

## Inverse Conway Maneuver

```text
Inverse Conway Maneuver:

Instead of: Team structure → Architecture (emergent)
Do this:    Desired architecture → Team structure (deliberate)

PROCESS:
1. Design the target architecture
2. Identify communication patterns needed
3. Restructure teams to match
4. Architecture follows teams

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              TARGET ARCHITECTURE                        │
│