Software Vendors Have the Power to Change Your Company’s Culture

Always get software created by an organization with culture and values that match your own organizational culture.

Here’s what Conway’s law dictates:

“Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.”

An oversimplified example of this would be that if three teams build a product, it will probably have three distinct pieces.

More broadly, a software company will produce a product that reflects its internal team structure, culture, and philosophy. This is often called ‘opinionated’ software and can be good if you like their culture and philosophy.

It’s one of the reasons software buyers should evaluate not only a vendor’s functionality and pricing, but also the behavior of the humans they interact with at the vendor’s end. Their attitudes. Their ideas. The ways they communicate.

This will be reflected in their software and your experience with it.

I want to add that if you inspire to have a culture like a software vendor you like, get the software your whole organization will use created by them.

The software will slowly create undercurrents of a positive culture change that no other change management officer may be able to bring about.