Anarchy: A Solution to Software Development Organizations? with Andrew Harmel-Law

Anarchy: A Solution to Software Development Organizations? with Andrew Harmel-Law

From Software Architektur im Stream by Eberhard Wolff

April 10, 2026 · 1h 2m

About this episode

The episode discusses anarchist organization patterns and their relevance to software engineering with guest Andrew Harmel-Law.

“Patterns of Anarchy” is a collection of writings published in 1966. Andrew came to it because a) Christopher Alexander quotes from it in “A Pattern Language” and b) because as a consultant and developer they are interested in different patterns of organizing. What interested them most about this book was the section “Constructive Anarchism: Alternative Communities and Programs”. This covers the how of anarchist organization. They will share some of the most interesting insights from their perspective as a student of socio-technical organization design. Sometimes they’ll add some commentary. And of course the question is how it relates to software engineering. Links - Andrew Harmel-Law "Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally" at MartinFowler.com https://bit.ly/scaling-arch-mf - Book Andrew Harmel-Law "Facilitating Software Architecture" https://facilitatingsoftwarearchitecture.com - Andrew's slides from Agile meet Architecture https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/193azugEYp0HGyMt0xX4hsHueheOYhKMv8-MDpFJwc84/edit?slide=id.g2b2daafd22f_0_1#slide=id.g2b2daafd22f_0_1 - Book Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer: No Rules Rules https://www.norulesrules.com/ - SE Radio 253: Fred…

People in this episode

Host: Eberhard Wolff

Guest: Andrew Harmel-Law

Topics covered

  • anarchism
  • software development
  • socio-technical organization
  • patterns of organization
  • software engineering

Keywords

  • anarchy
  • software architecture
  • organizational patterns
  • socio-technical design
  • consulting

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Patterns of Anarchy, A Pattern Language, Facilitating Software Architecture, No Rules Rules, SE Radio 253: Fred George on Developer Anarchy

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