Flipping Assumptions with 'Programmer Anarchy'

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.