Team boundaries

Conway's law predicts that system structure mirrors communication paths. Team boundaries should align with ownership, cognitive load, and the ability to deliver independently. Stream-aligned teams own end-to-end capabilities; platform teams reduce toil; enabling teams coach adoption.

Misaligned boundaries create coordination tax: every change needs a committee, shared on-call for unrelated services, and tacit knowledge spread across Slack threads.

On interviews: describe how you would reshape architecture when two teams constantly block each other, and when a platform team is justified.

Common pitfalls: drawing service boundaries around existing team silos without validating domain fit; platform teams that become gatekeepers; ignoring cognitive load per team.

The trade-off is flexibility versus complexity—know when the simpler path is enough.

Checklist:

• Match service ownership to team mission.
• Minimize cross-team changes for routine features.
• Define interaction modes: collaboration, X-as-a-service, facilitating.
• Measure lead time and coordination overhead.