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Five Laws

Conway's Law #

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

Melvin Conway, 1968

Hyrum's Law #

With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody.

Hyrum Wright

Parkinson's Law #

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

C. Northcote Parkinson, The Economist, 1955

Amdahl's Law #

The speedup of a program using multiple processors is limited by the fraction of the program that must run sequentially.

Gene Amdahl, 1967

Little's Law #

The long-run average number of items in a stable system equals the average arrival rate multiplied by the average time an item spends in the system: L = λW.

John Little, 1961