Mark Cruth

It’s the year 2025 and our long-time CEO has just made his last decision. Earlier today our CEO announced that with support of the Board of Directors, we will be eliminating our management hierarchy and departmental structure to better distribute decision making and promote self-management. A company of 100,000 people distributed around the world with revenues of $10 billion annually, this change has already sparked many important questions such as “how does this effect the way I work today?” The CEO has asked us, a group of employees representing all aspects of the company, to come up with a plan to implement his final mandate within 90 days. Now we must figure out what this means for us, our customers, and ultimately the future of our company.

This is no ordinary workshop. No PowerPoint presentation. No talk. Rather, this will be an experimental storytelling game. Taking a highly possible situation, we’ll experiment with how it might play out in the real world. Working in groups, you’ll be given complex problems to solve, such as how do we support employees who don’t want to participate in the change, what happens to those in management roles, and how do we make sure customers don’t get forgotten throughout the change. Groups will collaborate during the session to paint the picture of what such a transition might look like, including the actions we could take to make the transition smoother. Join me as we reimagine the future of work by playing with it first.

Many of us associate the word “Anarchy” with conditions like lawlessness and disorder. If you were to look in the dictionary you’d see a definition that might surprise you…“a society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government.” Once a beacon for autonomy and creativity within the software development community, the Agile movement has fallen prey to standardization, monetization and bureaucracy. Many in the community believe that this distortion of Agile has resulted from one specific variable; the negative influence of management. In response, developers around the world are looking to reclaim their Agile with the introduction of the Developer Anarchy movement; enabling complete freedom by eliminating the role of management entirely. During this interactive session we will explore the emergence of the Developer Anarchy movement and why removing the influence of management can unlock true agility in software development. We will explore the connection between Developer Anarchy and Self-Management Theory, including concepts such as Holocracy and Sociocracy, showing how these ideas are fueling a new way people are organizing around work. Examining several real-world examples from companies like eBay, Zappos, and Valve Software, we will experiment with some tactical changes that can be implemented right away to drive more autonomy within your organization. So if your Agile transformation doesn’t feel like it’s changing the way you work, maybe it’s time to insight a little anarchy!