Architecture and communication among product development engineers

This paper summarizes some quantitative measures and qualitative observations that the authors have made regarding the effective of architecture on technical communication. They begin with some early results, showing how the probability that two organizations' members will communicate regularly declines rapidly with the distance between their work locations. Following this, they assess several objections to these observations and deal with each. They look briefly at the relationships among different media, (i.e., face-to-face, telephone, electronic mail) and how each is affected by separation. Finally, they discuss some examples of architectural strategies for managing communication.