Individual ants do not. The colony as a whole, however, does, through virtue of the shared stigmertic responses, which is forgivable because those responses have been selected for because they result in that structure.<p>People, of course, can do better - we can map out the terrain, come up with a plan, and <i>then</i> follow swarm methodologies.<p>In this kind of situation, swarm methodologies look like recursively applied minimum-viable-product development: Look at the situation. Determine the smallest unit of change to produce meaningful results. Make that change. Repeat.<p>Do this at all levels of the organization and code base: from the top (the people making the map and the plan) to the bottom (an hour&#x27;s worth of code).<p>The essence of stigmertic coordination is that I respond to the situation as it is, rather than the situation as I desire it do be (&quot;the plan&quot; - how I desire the situation to be in the future), and that when I finish a task, I re-evaluate the situation as it is, rather than proceed along a set path (&quot;the plan&quot;).