List of useful Laws, Patterns and Frameworks:

Starting point: https://martyoo.medium.com/stop-team-topologies-fd954ea26eca

Cynefin framework

Cynefin offers five decision-making contexts or “domains” that help people to identify how they perceive situations and make sense of their own and other people’s behaviour.

• Clear / Simple
• Complicated
• Complex
• Chaotic
• Confusion

I used this in a most basic sense when trying to make sense of a root cause analysis. It gave me insight into why it was hard to do that day.

It was because some of the branches were leading into Complicated domain (where many software developer's technical problems lie) but others into the Complex domain (which are harder to pin down in a sequential "5 Whys").

• Dave Snowden
• Cynefin is a Welsh word for 'habitat'
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework

Conway’s law

The way a system is built will reflect how the organization itself is structured. So, design your system and your organization together, allowing them to grow and change in sync.

This has come up a lot lately for me due to being core in the book Team Topologies, along with the Inverse Conway's Law.

Inverse Conway's Law suggests that the way software is designed and structured can actually influence and change the organization itself.

Dunbar’s number (150)

The cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships — relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.

Jobs to Be Done Theory

The theory that helps innovators understand how and why people make decisions.

Parkinson’s law

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Do shorter Sprints, Cycles, meetings, Timeboxes, etc.

Parkinson’s law of triviality

The time spent on any agenda item will be in inverse proportion to the sum of money involved.

Theory of Constraints

“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.” Identify the system constraint. Exploit the system’s constraint. Subordinate everything else to the above decision. Elevate the system’s constraint. Rinse and repeat.

Gall’s Law

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. Don't build or fix a complex system as a whole. Find the right granularity and introduce simple elements that work and keep the system working at all times.

Engelbart’s law

The intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential. Start small and slow to "get better at getting better.”

Little’s Law

Service time is the bottleneck that creates the queue.

Strangler fig pattern

Wrapping old code, with the intent of redirecting it to newer code—bonus points for Skunk Works cultural wrapping.

Brooks’s law

”Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”

Dunning–Kruger effect

People who are unskilled in some area wrongly believe their ability is higher than average. They don't know what they don't know.

Occam’s razor

Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. Keep your teams as simple and small as possible.

Pareto principle

For many phenomena, 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes.

Vierordt’s law

Retrospectively, “short” intervals of time tend to be overestimated, and “long” intervals of time tend to be underestimated.

Larmans Law

Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo.