At PHZ.fi we have found a better way to develop sustainable software by following the core values of Agile Manifesto
http://www.agilemanifesto.org
Jeff Sutherland, the inventor of Scrum has elaborated the meaning of values further.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997578.aspx
We should Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Our core value is teamwork, which enables Collective Code Ownership and continuous learning. The sysadmins will pair with frontend developers and customers with the backend developers, trainees with senior developers. Studies have shown that when all communication obstacles have been removed, the team will perform up to 50x better than the industry average.
- Respect for the worth of every person
- Truth in every communication
- Transparency of all data, actions and decisions
- Trust that each person will support the team
- Commitment to the team and to the team’s goals
Working software over Comprehensive documentation
By constantly refactoring the software by doing Test Driven Development, the best documentation for the software is 100% passing automated tests.
- Define acceptance tests when defining the feature
- Implement features serially and in priority order
- Run acceptance tests on each feature as soon as they are implemented
- Fix bugs that are identified as highest priority as soon as possible
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
We have found out that the Truth doesn’t reside in our office, but we should go out of the building and find out the real customer. Since it is difficult to get the customer to come over to our office, we normally nomadically roam on-site at customer premises.
- When the team cannot work on-site with the customer (such as consumer projects), the team must appoint a customer proxy, product owner, who is always available at the office
Responding to change over following a plan
- It is better to adapt to change quickly rather than agree and follow a fixed contract or a plan. We have found out that even a 2 week iteration might be a too long period to fix on a certain plan, customer typically wants to change the plan even faster especially on consumer services that are in production maintaned by PHZ.fi Devops.
- At PHZ.fi we unfortunately do not excel at fixed price and scope projects, but try to avoid them. Instead we provide an agile team for an hourly rate, and the customer can decide on the scope, priority and the length of the project flexibly. By prioritizing the highest value and highest risk customer stories to be implemented first and released frequently (daily or weekly), the highest business value can be delivered quickly and the total project risk diminishes quickly towards the end of the project.
Summary
The core PHZ Full Stack values are
- High Skill
- Teamwork
- Feedback
- High Quality