The team is the fundamental means of delivery at organizations. But organizations also need to ensure that the cognitive load on a team is not too high. A team working with software systems that require too high of a cognitive load cannot effectively own or safely evolve the software. In this post, we will identify ways in which the cognitive load on teams can be detected and limited in order to safely promote fast flow of change. First, let's look at how to measure cognitive load. Measure … [Read more...]
Team Cognitive Load
When we talk about cognitive load, it’s easy to understand that any one person has a limit on how much information they can hold in their brains at any given moment. The same happens for any one team by simply adding up all the team members’ cognitive capacities. What is Cognitive Load Cognitive load was characterized in 1988 by psychologist John Sweller as “the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory.” Sweller defines three different kinds of cognitive load: Intrinsic … [Read more...]
Conway’s Law: Critical for Efficient Team Design in Tech
This post on Conway's Law is adapted from Chapter 2 of Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow. Conway's Law Conway’s law is critical to understanding the forces at play when organizing teams amidst the long-lasting, unattended impact they can have on our software systems, as the latter have become larger and more interconnected than ever before. But you might wonder if a law from 1968 about software architecture has stood the test of time. We’ve come a long … [Read more...]
