Anarchist Software Architecture

I switched the paradigm of my peers from “I am the expert, I know best how to do it” to “the individual contributors on the teams know their context best.”

We were choosing the next step for our automated UI tests. Another tester thought that the two of us, as the “highest ranking” testers, should make the decision that could affect 10+ teams. I thought we should talk to the teams. I gathered information about their current setups from them ahead of time. I forwarded the invitation for the conversation. I noted down the historical reasons for our current situation. The discussion led to a few more revelations, and did point to a clear answer for where the tests should be hosted.

Right after this, I met Andrew Harmel-Law at BoosterConf 2023, and his talk on A New Approach to Architecture this confirmed that this was another perfectly valid way to enable software to be built.