Seven habits, held to on purpose.
Small teams don't get to hide behind process. These are the working habits we hold each other to instead.
Curiosity
New domains get learned properly, not skimmed. A good share of what we build sits in a field one of us had to go and study first.
Engineering excellence
Written to be read again in two years by someone who wasn't there when it was written.
Practicality
The simple thing that fully solves it beats the clever thing that mostly does.
Intellectual honesty
Saying “we don't know yet” and “that didn't work” out loud, early, while it is still cheap to say.
Ownership
You said you would do it. The outcome belongs to you as well, not only the task.
Long-term thinking
No trading durable trust for a burst of attention. Attention decays. What people came to expect of you does not.
Meaningful innovation
Judged on the value created, never on how novel the stack happened to be.