Collaborative Manifesto

Let's Work Together ™

When we say "remote" we mean "collaborative", because of the way that software is produced by the most successful people and companies in the Internet Age.

Nearly every tech business today runs on open source software (created via distributed teams) and GitHub (created via distributed teams, and optimized for distributed teams). Because of this, nearly every tech company today stakes their entire existence on the productivity of distributed teams -- even when they don't allow their own employees to do any remote work at all.

We all have been greatly helped by Scrum and the Agile manifesto. It freed us from waterfall planning and excessive process. But they are critically flawed compared to today's reality in software development. Working collaboratively and continuous delivery need something more.

the "daily" part is silly. There's lots of technical work where "I'll see you in a few days" is the only sensible thing to tell your colleagues in marketing, UX, QA, product, or what have you.

Scrum takes this "daily" thing much too literally, making a daily meeting between developers and "business people" mandatory, whether there's any need for it or not. If you're required to say "that thing I said would take a couple days is taking a couple days," it's hard to do so without sounding apologetic, defiant, or mindless. It's just a silly thing to require a professional to say to other professionals on a daily basis.

At eQuality Technology we love to work collaboratively, but that means we need to communicate as effectively as possible.

The following are eQuality Technology

1. Work from anywhere you want
   Working remotely allows you to be there for the ones you love, and be more available for them. It allows you to see more places, without ever having to commute. On top of that, working remotely removes almost every distraction.
2. Communicate Asynchronously
   If people are working from the same location, it is important that they do not skimp on writing things down. Everyone should use the same tools to communicate.
3. Recognize that the future is unknown
   
4. Have face-to-face meetings online
   There is no need to cut back on face-to-
5. Daily stand-up meetings are for bonding, blockers and the future
   
6. Estimate workload on a need-to-know basis
   -
7. Bond in real life
   Hanging out together in real life is awesome and totally worth it. These are the best days of our lives. Spend time together and make sure to do more than just work. Do a martial arts workshop together, visit the parents of an employee, go to a festival together: have fun. <
   At eQuality Technology we have an IRC channel #thanks for this purpose. It always feels good to give and receive a thanks.

Credits

• Sytse Sijbrandij, founder of GitLab, Remote Manifesto https://about.gitlab.com/2015/04/08/the-remote-manifesto/
• https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20150304-agile
• Jeff Robbins, co-founder of Lullabot https://www.lullabot.com/articles/what-is-a-distributed-company
• Toni Schneider, the CEO of Automattic https://toni.org/2010/03/08/5-reasons-why-your-company-should-be-distributed/
• http://yonder.io/