An Elegant Puzzle

An Elegant Puzzle

Systems of Engineering Management

Will Larson

Legibility Tax

Standardization enables scale but destroys local knowledge.

As organizations grow, there is a subtle slide into inconsistency, which is often one of the most challenging aspects of evolving from a small team into a much larger one. ... However, when the problem becomes truly acute, folks eventually reach for the same tool: adding a centralized, accountable group. The two most common flavors of this I’ve seen are “product reviews” to standardize product decisions and the “architecture group” to encourage consistent technical design. ... These groups typically consolidate significant authority from the broader community into the hands of a few. Many folks will feel a significant loss of freedom when you create these groups, as their zone of decision-making will be newly limited.
Pacemaker Principle

Constraints in one part dictate the whole.

The expected time to complete a new task approaches infinity as a team’s utilization approaches 100 percent, and most teams have many dependencies on other teams. Together, these facts mean you can often slow a team down by shifting resources to it, because doing so creates new upstream constraints.