Here’s a set of intriguing notes by Joey DeVilla from a talk at the FutureRuby conference called “Artisanal Retro-Futurism and Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism,” presented by Brian Marick. I hope a video goes up soon — I’d love to hear this in full.
# First, let’s consider what “anarcho-syndicalism” is
# Consider an agile team. The see themselves as alone in a dangerous place, where no one else is offering any help.* It would be nice if a “daddy” swooped in and help save them from the mean people
* The are problems with this approach: it’s pathetic, and it often doesn’t work# Here’s a story for you to illustrate things:
* An agile team was made to work in cubicles, like the rest of the company
* Agile methods aside, cubicles are the “single worst arrangement of humans and objects in space for the purpose of developing software”
* The team proposed changing their workspace to an open one
* Furniture Police turned them down
* In response, the scrum-master went to the office over the weekend. She disassembled the cubicles and changed the office layout to an open one. On Monday, she declared to the Furniture Police that “If the cubicles come back, you will have to fire me.”
* They gave in
FutureRuby Talk: “Artisanal Retro-Futurism and Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism”
Update: Here’s that video