Empowering people closest to problems with tools to solve them, building on the work of others through transparency and sharing.
Open Truss is a framework designed to minimize the time and technical ability required to build internal tools. Developers build display components and integrate Open Truss with datasources. Users build tools by selecting display components and combining them with queries to fetch / send data (e.g. sql, rest); all with no code changes or deploys. This empowers users with a platform to rapidly develop what they need to solve problems.
Despite being necessary to the success of organizations, internal tool systems often receive under investment resulting in:
- Disempowering users with intimate knowledge of problems with the means to solve them
- Eroding the functionality and software quality of the tools
- Fragmenting tools across multiple applications limiting usability and effectiveness
The Open Truss project is built by people with years of experience developing internal tools. We believe the following guiding principles are essential to successful internal systems. These principles are encoded in the Open Truss framework and design philosophy:
- Empower superusers - The people closest to problems have the most context on how to solve them. Equipping people with tools to build the tools they need empowers them to creatively solve problems.
- Flexibility with guardrails - The system provides building blocks that can be used in creative ways to create powerful, novel applications in a safe way.
- Collaboration by default - When collaboration and finding information are easy it builds trust, facilitates knowledge sharing, and provides people what they need to be effective.
- Asynchronous - When humans are free from systems that control and interrupt them, they do their best work and live more balanced lives.
- Delightful - Tools should be delightful to use. Not only does toil lead to less happiness, but when tools inspire joy they lead to more creativity and better outcomes.
- See docs for documentation on the Open Truss framework and development guidelines and processes.