Over the last 1.5+ years, we’ve significantly evolved the way that we work. With this experience under our belts, it feels like the right time to produce this Handbook, which reflects the way that we work now (circa early 2015). Instead of a weighty tome, we decided to make a pithy pamphlet, one designed to be usable and used on a daily basis. So, without further ado…
What do I work on? (How does self-selection work?)
- A project that energizes you (that uses your strengths)
- Folks can advocate for you to join a project, but the choice is ultimately yours
- A project at the intersection of company (e.g., quarterly) and personal (e.g., 10-year) goals
- Bugs that you own
- If in doubt, ask your peers, or experiment
Have we communicated what we’re working on during an iteration?
- Send scope on first day of iteration including, as appropriate, iteration length to all+scopes
- Optionally, send any updates as new information emerges to all+updates
- Track progress in Trello
- Present what you've shipped at Demo Day
Are we taking time to learn from our work?
- Send iteration summaries to all+summary
- You may use the iteration summaries template and save summaries in the Iteration Summaries Google Docs Folder
- Conduct retrospectives at least every cycle and share results
- Request and proactively share feedback
- Read others’ iteration summaries to see what everyone is up to
What do I do if I’m exhausted or not engaged?
- Talk to someone (not necessarily your manager)
- Take a break
- Work on something more engaging
- Communicate what you stopped working on
- Have a project lead
- Project lead is a short-term, administrative role to ensure communication within the project team, with the rest of the company, and externally (e.g., with customers or vendors). This includes, as appropriate, communicating scopes, any project updates, keeping project Trello board(s) up to date, presenting at Demo Day, running retrospectives (and sharing results), and producing project summaries.
- Each team selects their own project lead. There’s value in having the same person be project lead for the duration of the project. Everyone at the company is encouraged to be a project lead from time to time.
- Figure out project communication
- Consider stand-ups, hipchat rooms, trello boards, etc
- Iterations should not exceed two weeks
- Set Goals (Quarterly)
- Project prioritization (Quarterly)
- Think Like A Client (Quarterly)
- Post-mortems (Ad-hoc)
- Hack weeks (Quarterly)
- Tron-call (continuous) - link to rotation
- Salary review (annual)
- Values (Company Principles)
- The Role of Management is to provide clear business goals, and to help teams maximize productivity, minimize distraction, and to remove roadblocks. Managers also have regular 1:1s with individuals to help clarify company and personal goals and constraints.
- (Engineering) Domain Ownership