Kerr's Law
Named by Adam Stacoviak during an interview with Dave Kerr on The Changelog, based on Kerr's observation about team scalability. · The Changelog, Episode 689 (2026)
A team's ability to scale is limited by its ability to keep a shared mental model in sync with the system it builds.
Core Concepts
The Problem
As teams and codebases grow, individual developers form divergent mental models of how the system works, leading to misalignment, duplicated effort, and slower progress.
The Claim
Team scalability is directly constrained by the rate at which the team can synchronize its collective understanding of the system.
Key Evidence
- •Anecdotal observation from Dave Kerr's experience building Shellwright and managing development teams.
- •Kerr identifies this as a pattern he sees limiting many teams today.
Practical Implication
Investments in code review process, documentation, and tools that surface system state are not overhead — they are the primary lever for scaling a development team.
Nuance & Limits
The law is newly named and has not yet been independently validated or cited by other practitioners. It represents a practitioner observation rather than a research finding.
Source Material
Videos
Dave Kerr explains the principle behind what Adam Stacoviak names Kerr’s Law.
Citation Density
1 (initial naming)
Gaps
- ⚠ Has not been independently cited or validated outside this episode.
- ⚠ No quantitative evidence or case studies yet support the claim.
- ⚠ The mechanism by which mental model synchronization breaks down is described but not formally modeled.
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