Smart Ants – A New Way to Think About Business and Agility: Swarming

2024.10.28.

For years, scientists have been studying ants, bees, and wasps because of the amazing efficiency of social insects. What valuable insights do social insects hold?

Insects that live in colonies – ants, bees, wasps, termites – seems to have its own agenda, and yet the group appears to be highly organized. Apparently, the seamless integration of all individual activities does not require any supervision.

Social insects work without supervision. In fact, their teamwork is largely self-organized, and coordination arises from the different interaction among individuals in the colony. Although these interactions might be primitive (one ant merely following the trail left by another, for instance), taken together they result in efficient solutions to difficult problems (such as finding the shortest route to a food source among myriad possible paths). The collective behavior that emerges from a group
of social insects has been dubbed “swarm intelligence”.

In essence, why social insects have been so successful – they are almost everywhere in the ecosphere – is because of three characteristics:
⦁ Flexibility the group can quickly adapt to a changing environment.
⦁ Robustness: even when one or more individuals fail, the group can still perform its tasks.
⦁ Self-organization: the group needs relatively little supervision or top-down control.

Business executives relate readily to the first two attributes, but they often balk at the third, which is perhaps the most intriguing. Through self-organization, the behavior
of the group emerges from the collective interactions of all the individuals. In fact, a major recurring theme in swarm intelligence (and of complexity science in general)
is that even if individuals follow simple rules, the resulting group behavior can be surprisingly complex – and remarkably effective. And, to a large extent, flexibility and
robustness result from self-organization.

From the Principles of the Agile Manifesto:
⦁ “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.”
⦁ “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”
⦁ “Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done.”
⦁ “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”

Ant colonies as self-organizing and adaptive systems and agile analogy

⦁ Embracing emergent design
Ants do not have a predefined plan or blueprint for their nests, but rather construct them based on local feedback and interactions.

Similarly, agile projects can avoid upfront design and documentation, and instead rely on iterative and incremental development, where the design emerges from the collaboration of the team and the feedback of the customers. This can allow the project to adapt to changing requirements and expectations and deliver value faster and more efficiently.

⦁ Fostering self-organization
Each ant has a specific role and responsibility, such as forager, builder, or soldier, and can switch between them depending on the needs of the colony. Ants can also coordinate their actions with other ants through simple signals, such as pheromones, which indicate the direction, distance, and quality of food sources or nest sites.

Similarly, agile projects can empower the team members to self-organize and self-manage, without excessive control or interference from the outside. This can enhance the autonomy, creativity, and motivation of the team, and enable them to work more effectively and efficiently.

⦁ Leveraging collective intelligence
Ants do not rely on individual expertise or knowledge, but rather on the collective wisdom and learning of the colony. Ants can solve complex problems, such as finding the shortest path to a food source, or optimizing the allocation of resources. Ants can also learn from their environment and from each other, by observing, experimenting, and copying successful behaviors.

Similarly, agile projects can leverage the diverse skills and perspectives of the team members and encourage knowledge sharing and continuous learning. This can improve the quality and innovation of the products and foster a culture of collaboration and improvement.

⦁ Experimenting and exploring
Ants constantly experiment and explore new possibilities and alternatives, by trying out different actions and behaviors, and observing their outcomes and consequences. Ants can also test different solutions, such as building different types of nests, or using different materials, and compare their results and benefits.

Similarly, agile projects can experiment and explore new ideas and options, by creating prototypes, mock-ups, or simulations, and testing them with real users and data. Agile projects can also experiment and explore new technologies, tools, or methods, and evaluate their feasibility and suitability. This can help the project to generate and validate new value propositions, and to increase their creativity and innovation.

⦁ Learning and applying
Ants constantly learn and apply new information and knowledge, by modifying their actions and behaviors, and adopting the best practices and solutions. Ants can learn from their own experience, by remembering and repeating successful actions, or avoiding and correcting unsuccessful ones. Ants can also learn from other ants, by copying and imitating their actions, or following their signals and instructions.

Similarly, agile projects can learn and apply new information and knowledge, by updating and refining their products, based on the feedback and data they receive. Agile projects can also learn and apply new information and knowledge, by adopting and implementing the best practices and solutions, based on the evidence and results they obtain. This can help the project to improve their products and processes, and to achieve their goals and objectives.

What can we learn from ants for improving managing agile projects?

⦁ Critical success factors for agile teams
⦁ Diversity
⦁ Independence
⦁ Decentralization
⦁ Lightweight, simple rules

⦁ Conditions to fulfil these factors
⦁ Team members maintain their ability to explore new opportunities while exploiting existing ones
⦁ Let the system self-select the best ideas; and support the winning ideas with sufficient resources
⦁ Encouraging high bandwidth communication
⦁ Fostering the interchange of new ideas, create a place to keep and prioritize the new ideas

⦁ Tools to reach these conditions or Swarming:
⦁ working agreement
⦁ Shared team values
⦁ List of rules the team agrees to work by
⦁ Supports negative feedback

⦁ Retrospective
⦁ An opportunity to review and revise the working agreement
⦁ A chance to put new rules in place
⦁ A means of filtering out the rules that are “Losers”

Self-organizing insect communities provide insights not only for project management.

The potential of self-organizing small groups has also been recognized in warfare, known as swarming tactics.

Historically, this is best exemplified by the warfare of nomadic peoples, who were capable of covering great distances quickly on the Eurasian steppe. Their main weapon was the bow, allowing them to begin combat from beyond the range of the enemy’s weapons. Their strength lay more in speed, surprise, long-range weaponry, and tactics, which aimed to divide the enemy’s defenses and encircle them while avoiding direct close combat. In the face of superior enemy forces or unfavorable circumstances, they would retreat and resume the attack at a more advantageous moment. The Hungarians successfully practiced this kind of warfare until 955, during the conquest and subsequent raids.

There are numerous examples throughout history; more recently, one can mention the distributed operations of German submarines during World War II in the Atlantic (“wolfpack”) and the Iranian naval units during the “Tanker War.” In aerial operations, classic examples include the Battle of Britain, the air campaign against Germany in World War II, and the low-altitude attacks by Allied and Soviet aircraft in the last one and a half to two years of the war.

In contemporary times, one of the most advanced tools, the drone, operates according to colony rules.
An autonomous drone swarm, whose members are capable of flying simultaneously and carrying out reconnaissance or strike missions without direct control. Individual drones are not controlled by a ground operator, do not follow a pre-programmed task, and are not pre-synchronized with other drones. The swarm is a self-organizing system where every unit is equal—there is no leader or commander. Task allocation and synchronization occur autonomously during flight. Each drone communicates and cooperates with the others. They form a collective organism with a single shared mind, which automatically regulates the flight paths of individual drones (allowing them to fly together without collision) and breaks down the operator’s simple commands—such as “reconnoiter the area designated by coordinates” or “attack any movement in sector X”—into subtasks.
Insect communities and drones:

                          

Swarm intelligence is becoming a valuable tool for optimizing the operations of various businesses.

For example, an interesting lesson for businesses seeking to find and exploit new markets. Consider how different species of ants attract their nest mates to new food sources. There are three basic ways in which ants lead their fellows to new food sources. Laying pheromone is a form of “mass recruitment”: a large mass of ants is attracted down the path where the pheromone is strongest. In some species, though, an ant that finds a food source returns to the nest and vibrates its antennae to convince one other nest mate to return to the site. That’s called “tandem recruitment.” In other cases, an ant vibrates its antennae to get several nest mates to follow.
That’s “group recruitment.” In all three cases, individual ants can convey information about the quality of a food source, either by laying more pheromone or by increasing the frequency of their antenna vibrations.
The colony using tandem recruitment diverted several individuals quickly, but the number was too small to take full advantage of the richer food source. The colony practicing group recruitment was both flexible and efficient; many nest mates were quickly enlisted to raid the superior food source.

All in all self-organizing teams depend on a participants ability to discover an attractive subject that they are passionate about. Something they are so passionate about that they want to share it with others.

Sources: 

  • Eric Bonabeau –Christopher Meyer: A rovarközösségek intelligenciája – Egy teljesen új válllati gondolkodásmód Harvard Businessmanager, 3/2002
  • Nature’s Agile Maestros: Ant Clonies as Agile Paradigms for Project Excellence | by Mohammad ⦁ Rahighi⦁ | Medium
  • Kiss Roland százados: A rajzó hadviselés és az osztott műveletek kialakulása
    DOI: 10.35926/HSZ.2020.6.1 Honvédelmi Szemle

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