A question that we will explore at next week's Gartner Web Innovation Summit is: how does the new generation of social software change the dynamic between organizational structure and software architecture?

Some context is necessary to answer this question. A recurring concept in my presentations over the past two years is the notion that the "structure of a software system reflects, for better or worse the structure of the organization that built it". Although not widely known, this is not a new idea. It was first articulated in 1968 by Mel Conway, and is referred to as Conway's Law. A more cynical way to phrase this dictum is that enterprises with warped and dysfunctional organizational structures will often build systems that are similarly warped and dysfunctional.

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