Agile Is Anarchist!

When you learn that the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was written in 2001 at a Utah ski resort by seventeen middle-aged white guys (I checked, RIP my Google history), the usefulness of their collective brainchild may rightly come under suspicion. Just how revolutionary could this manifesto be?

It turns out, not very revolutionary at all. But that’s not to say it isn’t also important. In fact, Agile may have accidentally become the most effective awareness campaign for the practical viability of anarchism of the century.

The Inherent Anarchism of Agile

The four “values” outlined in the original Agile manifesto are as follows:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

While this mindset shift may have been unprecedented to the tech bros of 2001, you might find these values underwhelming at first blush. Are we truly lionizing these guys for discovering that “treating people like people” will create a better and more effective working environment?

Like I said, not exactly revolutionary. In fact, in 1994 (seven years before the Agile manifesto was born), Linda deLeon published an article in Administrative Theory & Praxis entitled “Embracing Anarchy: Network Organization and Intraorganizational Networks” that discussed the value of “self-designing, heterarchical networks” that have been “Japanized,” (a reference to the same “lean” methodology coined by Toyota in 1990 that Agile also heavily incorporates) as a way to put anarchism into practice.

Very few know who deLeon is today. Which is why the seventeen forefathers of Agile did have value. As often happens when a bunch of white guys “discover” a thing, they unintentionally kicked open a door to having necessary conversations about hierarchy and relationship-centered organizational structures that would not have been granted credibility otherwise. The Agile manifesto also allows otherwise skeptical neoliberal corporatists to engage safely (read: through tech jargon) with concepts like self-management, cross-functionality, and principle-based collaboration.

These same concepts come under fire as being undesirable or unrealistic when applied to social, economic, or political organization. No one can expect people to organize themselves based on shared values. It would be impossible to sustain any kind of non-hierarchical structure at scale. Meanwhile in the world of business, Agile is not only increasingly popular but also proven to be effective, even at the scale of hundreds of thousands of employees. Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, USAA… these global companies are all embracing (to varying extents) the concepts written about in the Agile manifesto. It has been translated into 68 languages, and C-suites around the world are beginning to incorporate Chief Agile Officers into their ranks. If you have so much as dipped a toe into the operations management side of LinkedIn, Agile terminology is impossible to escape.

The Twelve Principles of Agile Anarchism

One of the most useful things about Agile, according to its proponents, is that while it was originally created to apply to software development, its twelve principles can be successfully extrapolated to any business arena, as long as you massage the terminology. So let’s try this with an anarchist organization theory and see what kinds of messages it might suggest to us about how to best structure how we interact with each other:

Principle 1: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

The terms we’ll need to play with here are “customer” and “valuable software.” If this were being extrapolated to a marketing agency, for example, these terms might be swapped with “client” and “publishable content.” For our purposes, we might swap with “constituent” and “actionable solutions.” (The through line between valuable, publishable, and actionable is the deliverable’s ability to be immediately useful to whomever is receiving it.)

OK, so in this case, the first principle would be:

The primary goal of this organizational structure is to provide everyone represented or participating with prompt and consistent solutions to their problems that can be enacted right away.

Principle 2: We welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

Here we’ve got Agile’s commitment to the last of the four values: “Responding to change instead of following a plan.” What does “harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage” mean if applied to an anarchist theory of social organization?

We might change it to something like:

Welcome changing environments, even after a course of action has been decided. We put priority on adapting to each situation in a way that will best support the needs of the constituents.

Principle 3: Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

The focus here is “working software” on a short timescale. Agile has proven that frequent iterations of deliverables, provided as quickly as possible while still meeting the pre-arranged definition of done, is the best way to maintain team and customer morale as well as consistently increase value.

If we were to put this to work in our social organizational structure frame, the focus would be on hearing constituent needs early and often, and delivering actionable solutions as quickly as possible, instead of changing how things are done every four years, eight years, or after the end of a lifetime appointment:

Deliver actionable solutions frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

Principle 4: Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

“Business people” and “developers” will look different depending on the industry you are adapting Agile for. In our case, we can look at the relationship between the two: developers are to business people as committees are to constituents, e.g. “provider of solutions” and “receiver of solutions.” The “project” in this case more generally would be “actions taken to meet a pre-established goal.”

The requirement for Agile anarchism, then, would be:

Committees and constituents must work together daily to meet their goals.

Principle 5: Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

Perhaps one of the most blatant anarchist sentiments of Agile is the idea that if you build around motivated individuals and provide an environment of support, they will do the work. As such, this principle needs very little reframing, and can live as is:

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

Principle 6: The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

Another core attribute of anarchist self-organization relies on accessible, reliable, and structured democratic discussion (the term we’ve been using is “committee”). The value of sitting face-to-face with all involved parties and coming to solutions through the unfiltered exchange of information is also a core tenet of Agile. Once again, this principle needs only a little massaging to update it for our purposes:

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a community is face-to-face conversation.

Principle 7: Working software is the primary measure of progress.

There is a lot to unpack in this one. Traditionally, Agile uses this principle to express the value of “Working software over comprehensive documentation.” In other words, spending time theorizing about the end product and reaching perfection on paper is not the best use of time. Instead, progress is measured by getting to workable solutions quickly, and then iterating on them collaboratively to refine them.

This principle is a crux in the argument for anarchism. Social theorists complain that anarchists do not have a plan of action for every eventuality written up in a comprehensive instruction manual, and therefore it is an untenable worldview. As in Agile business, however, effective anarchists prioritize actionable solutions and the agility to refine them as needed. Therefore:

Actionable solutions are the primary measure of progress.

Principle 8: Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Sustainability is key in Agile processes. It should be organized and paced in a way where participants do not burn out or give up after a few iterations. Rather, the way forward is through the adoption of a maintainable, constant pace.

When discussing anti-capitalist action in general, too often we hear about methods that are unsustainable. Protest. General strike. Burn it all down. Viva la revolución. This kind of action, while sometimes necessary for short term goals, cannot be sustainable. Anarchism highlights incremental, immediately actionable change as a way to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Let’s reframe this principle as follows:

Agile Anarchism promotes sustainable development. The community should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Principle 9: Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

The terms “technical excellence” and “good design” should be looked at here. Both of these require constant alertness, dedicated attention, and the feedback of specialists. There is a rigorous defense of the definition of done at all times.

We might draw from this a similar principle:

Constant participation and commitment to improvement guided by the input of specialists enhances anarchism.

Principle 10: Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential.

On it’s face, this suggestion is fairly innocuous. Don’t have two people doing the same thing. Don’t over-complicate methods of communication. Focus on doing the best work you can as fast as you can.

Followed to its own end, however, this is possibly one of the most anti-capitalist concepts in Agile methodology. The neoliberal mindset of “growth at all costs,” requires redundant, extraneous, and excessive amounts of work in order to create environments of ever-increasing production and consumption. A great critique of this is David Graeber’s 2018 book Bullshit Jobs, which can be very succinctly summed up in the above principle. Like Principle 5, this one needs no amendments.

Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential.

Principle 11: The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

Self-organization is at the heart of both Agile and anarchism. Contrary to the corporate and political instinct to appoint, manage, and delegate work from above, this principle extols the value of allowing people to organize themselves into groups, share and split tasks, and discuss both the work and the approach to the work as a unit.

This also happens to be the most upsetting idea to those who criticize anarchism. “There’s no way this would work with more than a few people,” being the primary objection. However, this doesn’t seem to have been a problem for Agile, which has been implemented across global corporate entities to positive effect.

In that case, let us say that Principle 11 could be stated as:

The best structures, rules, and requirements emerge from self-organizing communities.

Principle 12: At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Finally, hearkening back to Principle 2, the last Agile principle says that it is up to the team to schedule reflection periods as a way to identify pain points, figure out what could work better, and move forward. This could be a biweekly retrospective, a thirty-day check-in, or another form of intra-team assessment. An Agile team will never run on autopilot.

The same is true of a healthy anarchist society. There is no one right way to be an anarchist, and no one is going to get everything right all the time. There will always be those who want to take advantage of a lenient system or inadvertently begin implementing hierarchies. There will always be areas that anarchists will need to problem-solve in order to provide for the communities they are a part of. And like Agile, that reality is not a reason to avoid it. Rather, it is to be embraced as an asset from a perspective of continuous improvement.

So we have Principle 12:

At regular intervals, the community reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Implementing Agile “In the Shell” of A Corporation

An objection to this analogy that I anticipate might go as follows: “You are saying that Agile is anarchist, and yet Agile by definition works within a capitalist structure.” Yes, of course. Agile was created by capitalists, and provides profit to corporations through increasing productivity, team morale, and ultimately profit.

And while it is embedded in capitalism, it is not itself capitalist. Similarly, anarchism can survive and thrive while embedded within capitalism. When writing about the Occupy Wall Street movement for Aljazeera in 2011, Graeber points out:

Hence the famous anarchist call to begin “building the new society in the shell of the old” with egalitarian experiments ranging from free schools to radical labour unions to rural communes.

Agile is building self-organizing, non-hierarchical, and value-driven teams “in the shell” of corporations, and proving their effectiveness and worth while doing so. Just because a corporation is not fully Agile itself does not necessarily impact how Agile the development teams within it might be. Likewise, a country need not be anarchist (indeed, I don’t see a way that goal even makes sense) for anarchism to live within it, thriving and providing value to those within its communities.

Finally, Agility is a concept that many companies make strides towards, with or without a goal of becoming “fully Agile.” Some corporations have designated Agile specialists to coach even the executive levels in its methodology. Other corporations have no such sweeping structures in place, and individual teams, departments, or divisions implement whichever Agile principles they can within the confines of a predetermined schedule or workflow.

Anarchism also is like this. There is no one right way to be anarchist, and anarchism is not dependent on perfectly meeting a set of criteria. Implementing whichever principles you can, given the limitations of your surroundings, is sufficient to begin the journey in that direction. There is no need to wait, no mandate that will be coming down from the head office. There is only an invitation to do things in a new way.