Engineering Culture Manifesto
We think big, but deliver small
We build software that delivers value for our users whether they are our customers, TSMs or other stakeholders. We do this through fully understanding our problems and delivering improvements in small, incremental changes that make a difference. We test these with our users and iterate on the feedback. We resist the temptation to overly complicate or engineer our solutions. We listen to user feedback, letting them and the data tell us where we go next. We tackle big problems through iterative, manageable steps.
We win as a team
The success of the team is more important than the output of any one individual. We are highly collaborative and work together to solve problems. We keep each other informed and do not work in isolation. We review each others’ work and provide useful, constructive feedback on any significant changes. We embrace transparency and focus on where we can improve. We invest in the growth of our team by sharing knowledge, giving and accepting feedback. We prioritize action that enables changes to be shipped to our users. We know spreading knowledge levels everyone up and creates a stronger engineering group.
We innovate through product enhancement, not technological trends
We opt for technology that empowers us to positively impact our users, choosing well-supported and trusted tech over chasing fleeting trends. Innovation in our tech stack is a deliberate and careful choice, driven by the potential for increased value to users, TSMs, and the business. What matters is that our tech works, is secure, is widely accessible and provides a consistent developer experience for our teams, not whether it is new or old. Our primary focus is on solving problems and improving the lives of users through the products we provide.
We harness the power of tech debt with intentionality
We acknowledge that our cultural approach may result in accumulating technical debt within our platform, and that's OK. We recognize the deliberate, conscious, and careful accrual of tech debt as a potent tool, enabling faster value delivery and quicker realization of commercial benefits. Embracing this as a positive choice, we commit to repaying it over time, factoring it into our strategic planning.
Thoughtful coding is our guiding principle
We acknowledge that code is never complete, conditions change and products evolve. We understand that code will be iterated upon by ourselves and others over time. We write code to be read by humans, debugged by humans and maintained by humans. We distill complex problems into code that is concise and easy to follow. We favour platforms, tools and libraries that are easy to understand, inspect and observe. We focus on performance, security and understanding the impact of our changes on our users. We use our PRs, comments and commit messages to explain the why, as well as the what.
Quality is a collective responsibility
Quality is a team sport. We all own, influence and contribute to the quality of our products. We understand our users rely on our products to help them succeed. We take ownership of the changes we make and their impact on our users. By integrating effective planning, testing and monitoring into our development lifecycle, we proactively identify and address potential issues, mitigating risks before they impact the end-user experience. We believe in a culture of continuous improvement, where the pursuit of quality is ingrained in every aspect of our work, creating robust and reliable products.
We are all managers of one
We take personal responsibility for our actions. We understand the commitments we have made and take personal responsibility to deliver, sharing our progress along the way. We prioritise our time on the most important things for our users. As remote workers, we understand the need to be visible, responsive and transparent to our team. We prioritize effective communication at all times. We fully understand expectations of our team and align with this. We have a bias to action.
These principles are intended to compliment each other, providing a framework that outlines our engineering culture and expectations. They are crafted to work alongside our Dentally Operating Principals and help maximize our greatest asset, our people.