High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Organizational patterns are structures of relationship, usually in a professional organization, that help the organization achieve its goals. The patterns are usually inspired by analyzing multiple professional organizations and finding common structures in their social networks. Such patterns are collected and organized into pattern languages, which are published as a foundation for process improvement and organizational design, largely in the software development community. Organizational pattern efforts since 1991 have led to a small body of literature and a community of research and support, both of which have close ties to the software pattern community. Organizational patterns broadly support knowledge sharing about organizational design and support corporate memory of reorganizations and process changes. They are often used as the foundation of project retrospectives.