Conway's Law

The rule that the organisation of the software and the

organisation of the software team will be congruent;

originally stated as "If you have four groups working on a

compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler".

Melvin Conway, an early proto-hacker, wrote an {assembler} for

the {Burroughs 220} called SAVE. The name "SAVE" didn't stand

for anything; it was just that you lost fewer card decks and

listings because they all had SAVE written on them.

[{Jargon File}]