Principles
We aim to create sustainable value that compounds over time. These five principles guide how we build our tools and design our methods. They focus on where human judgment offers the greatest leverage.
Enable control.
Give people the understanding, authority, and means to direct the work. Keep ownership and consequential decisions in their hands, while allowing agents to carry authorized work forward.
Protect attention.
Amplify the signal above the noise. Make consequential choices easy to notice, understand, question, and revise. Make failures diagnosable. Avoid repeated effort and the need to reconstruct context.
Build knowledge.
Develop shared understanding and keep it coherent, current, and recoverable. Preserve intent, decisions, rationale, and constraints. Establish clear, authoritative sources.
Improve efficiency.
Reduce the cost of achieving intended outcomes over time, effort, and money without compromising quality. Keep ceremony proportionate, measure its effects, and simplify where the evidence supports it.
Follow the evidence.
Seek meaningful evidence. Let it guide decisions. Revise conclusions when findings warrant it. Verify claimed outcomes and make uncertainty, missing evidence, and waivers explicit.
Suggested reading
- Calm Tech Institute. Principles of Calm Technology.
- Jakob Nielsen. 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.
- Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash.
- Scrum.org. Evidence-Based Management Guide.
- The Pragmatic Programmer. Tips.