2. Impact and Transparency

Our output is Impact and Transparency.

• We judge ourselves based on the impact we have and our ability to present and explain it.

• We run our software and learn from it.

  • We eat our own dogfood by listening in on sales calls and demos and (where possible) using our products.

  • We use tracking, AB tests, data and monitoring to optimize our products and impact.

• Milestones show our long- and short-term trade-offs between scope, quality and speed. Externally we add buffers.

• We continuously push to increase our productivity.

  • We do 80:20, i.e. we look for smart ways to go 80% of the way with 20% of the effort.

  • We don’t waste time discussing 🌏 easily reversible decisions.

• We educate stakeholders on how they positively/negatively impact our productivity.

• We build transparency by …

  • … always asking questions.

  • … asking and mutually explaining our business goals and processes.

  • … building a shared vocabulary.

  • … visualizing and measuring output and flow of work using industry best practices (numbers are conversation starters but insufficient to compare teams’ performance).

  • … explaining the sometimes counter-intuitive truths of engineering; examples:

    • Pair-programming increases speed.

    • Decreasing team size and number sometimes increases output.

    • Short-term market success doesn’t correlate with maintainability.

    • Crunching reduces mid-term output.

Transparency over Output

A key challenge is smooth collaboration between teams in a fast-moving environment. Keeping stakeholders accurately aware of our output resolves a main cause of friction and builds strong trust.