With open-plan offices and, particularly, with ubiquitous, instant communication via chat tools, anyone can communicate with anyone else. In this situation, one can accidentally fall into a pattern of communication and interaction where everyone needs to communicate with everyone else (putting the onus on the consumer to distill what is relevant) in order to get work done. From the viewpoint of Conway’s law, this will drive unintended consequences for the software systems, especially a lack of modularity between subsystems.
