README

This document

A way for you to understand why I am here and for us to measure success. This is heavily inspired by Rands and others.

We are all contributing at a high level.
- We deliver features that bring joy to our customers or at least remove sources of pain and frustration.
- To our stakeholders, we are big damn heroes.
We take control of, and responsibility for, our own destiny.
- We identify challenges and opportunities and come up with solutions.
- If something is beyond our control, we look for ways to get it under our control or get help.
We help each other.
We hold each other accountable.
We can expect excellence in ourselves and each other.
We assume positive intent.
We always ask "why?" and especially "Why can't we just make it be better?"
We constantly learn and adapt.
- If something isn't working, we change it.
All of this is both fun and sustainable.

You are good at your job
- If you weren't you wouldn't be here.
- I will still question you.
  - When I do question you, it is because:
    - I'm trying to learn more about what you know and I don't.
    - I'm trying to be a sounding board and make sure you do your best work.
You have more detailed knowledge than I do of what you are doing.
- I have more context than you do. (Context is part of what I do here.)
You will tell me if you are having trouble doing your job.
- One of my main responsibilities is setting you up for success, not failure.
  - You will know before I do if you are not set up for success, so say something.
You feel safe debating with me.
- The best ideas are those that have been viewed from multiple angles and been the subject of debate and discussion.
  - Sometimes, I will play devil's advocate for this purpose alone.
  - Sometimes, I'm just being dense.

Face to face is best.
Emails - I will reply in < 24 hours.
Slack - you should expect to get an answer right away. I will do my best.
If it ever feels like we are not communicating, grab me and let's hash it out.
I feel very strongly that teams need to over-communicate their progress.
- Transparency builds trust.
- We should be open and transparent about our successes and our failures.
- Typically, this takes the form of a weekly status email going to all stakeholders.

These are primarily for you your time to talk about whatever you want.
Secondarily, they are for me to talk about what I want to talk about, but you come first.
They shouldn't be status updates unless you really want to talk about status updates.
These are flexible depending on our schedule, but we need to have them.

Honest, compassionate feedback is one of the most important tools we have.
This needs to go both ways.
- I'm going to make mistakes.
  - I expect you to tell me when that happens.
    - Yeah, it might be hard, but I'm counting on you.

I like to count things.
- Story points help us understand our capacity and our velocity.
- Bug counts tell is if we have a quality problem.
- Production support tickets tell us where we need to improve the system.
- Performance metrics ensure our products work the way we need them to.
- Monitoring ensures we aren't the last to learn about a problem.
I don't want to be ruled by metrics, but they let us stay on top of the chaos.
If our metrics ever seem to be driving the wrong behavior, we need to stop and talk about it. See Feedback

We can always do a 1/1 meeting without a formal agenda
We can always to an informal "help me talk through an idea" without a formal agenda. (although, in reality the agenda is "Let's talk through caching" or whatever.)
Any meeting over 15 minutes needs to have an agenda.
- If I call a meeting > 15 minutes with no agenda, call me out.
- If possible, we should have a common set of notes for meetings so we know who agreed to what.
Story grooming is important to get everybody on the same page.
Retrospectives are important to help us improve.