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Flipping Assumptions with 'Programmer Anarchy' (michaelfeathers.typepad.com)
26 points by michaelfeathers on July 17, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments



Struggling to understand what this post it trying to communicate. I don't use automated tests, but I also can't cobble a workable system together with discrete services that don't exceed 100 lines of code.

Most importantly, I see software as a business enabler, but in response to a business problem, not as an intrinsic business opportunity.

These points strike me as being unrelated, and anti-process. If that's really the point then I have to assume that it targets specific project types (web, for example, because these I can't see these things working with native clients or app servers).


I think the short version of the hypothesis is that teams composed of brilliant individuals working on hyper-focused projects under conditions of high motivation perform exceedingly well without using any identifiable process.

Not discussed is how this applies to the rest of us regular schmoes working on middle-of-the-road projects with ordinary levels of emotional arousal.

One of my professors actually had "anarchy" as one of the software development methodologies. No kidding, it was there on the slide along with stuff like CMMI, Lean, Agile and a few others. He wasn't using it as a rhetorical foil, he meant anarchy in the sense of "no central governor".

He'd consulted for dozens of companies over several decades. He said that most of them practice some form of anarchy. And he'd seen it work ... once. It was a team composed of brilliant individuals, working on a hyper-focused project, under conditions of high motivation.


Barun Singh gave a great talk about a similar workflow at Boston Ruby in December. I highly recommend it.

Talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4whL7Ll7ww

Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/barunio/atomic-commits

Well-written notes: http://barunsingh.com/2012/12/13/anarchy_in_software.html




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