Code of Ethics
Our Code of Ethics is on display for all to see. We pride ourselves on working with integrity and on fostering win-win collaborations.
Agile (A)
Foster adaptability and openness to feedback, ensuring a collaborative and responsive approach to challenges.
Agility means we and the client, you and us, are collaborative and adaptive to each other and the challenges. This is a new dynamic for some, where they are familiar with ordering and demanding a specific outcome. We value agility and believe that when we are adaptive, we are stronger, produce less waste, share problems, share solutions, and adapt together.
We want agility in relationships and in the work we do. We want to ensure that we consider agility when dealing with problems and identify the right sort of agility per problem.
Minimal (Mi)
We accept that a checkbox or Definition of done is not what done means. Done is solving the problem and then evaluating it as fit-for-purpose, evaluating it for how it solves a problem. A minimal solution is more than solving it, it is maximising the good, reducing the bad and bringing it down to its minimal state. Minimal is elegant. Minimal is not overcomplicating, nor leaving something as complete when it is still rough around the edges.
We aim to complete a task without unnecessary complexity. We aim to reduce, cut to the chase and we do not make things more complicated to obscure work or costs.
As a client, you accept that we are not always perfectionists, nor do we promise perfection, but we promise to not make things worse and complicated when it does not need be.
Maintainable (M)
We want long-term relationships and want to maintain these relationships through good work, good practices, trust, integrity and fairness. We look at fairness between ourselves, every professional, client, and service provider relationship.
We want our work to be maintainable. We want to try to understand how a solution will last, what it will take to repair it and the associated costs.
Maintaining is dealing with change. Change is expensive and we endeavour to understand future change where plausible to understand the cost of change.
Environmental (E)
We are concerned with sustainability, whether in work load, skills or our relationship to each other and the system. It is only in the acceptance that we are all working in a system and that system affects each other do we realise how to treat each other and the environment.
The environment may be the earth, the organisation, the team, the coding conventions. We are in systems within systems and strive to ensure a sustainable environment enabling other values.
Since we want to be sustainable, we don’t accept one-sided relationships, instead look for win-win and sustainable long-term practices.
Reachable (R)
We have to reach goals, be approachable and reach what we set out to accomplish. Always with an eye on what must be done, we cannot achieve it, if we are not approachable. Collaboration is reachable. We expect to be reachable for you and for you to be reachable to us. We expect to meet deadlines, when set, but most of all, we want to reach the outcome, we want to reach a valuable outcome.
For this, we are very conscientious in knowing whether we can reach. We do not accept deadlines for the sake of deadlines or fake urgency. This is why we developed our service-as-a-product system, because we want to reach set defined outcomes and meet expectations and timelines as is known. We value reaching objectives, but not arbitrarily.
We want to reach solutions that provide valuable outcomes.
Solvable (S)
We are problem-solvers. We accept that problems have many kinds of solutions and solutions come with various costs and expertise. We understand that solutions can also be the cause of problems. We strive for solutions that have minimal problems. We strive for long-term solutions that are Maintainable, Minimal and yet Reachable.
We want to solve problems not only for now, bit also for later. You could solve a problem that break next month, we always strive for long-term solutions.
Since everything is a trade-off, we evaluate and look for a long-term solution that makes sense in terms of all the other values, like Minimal. Where we cannot help but introduce a problem by the best solution, we will ensure Maintainable and other values are accounted for, to reduce cost where plausible.
Extensible (Ex)
We love creating solutions that solve multiple problems or allow us to solve a future problem more easily. We understand, though, that not all problems require extension points, but where it is a quick win, you can bet we will have thought of it and implemented it.
Extending a solution easily to other problems later is where large cost savings can occur, provided it is aligned with strategy and the long-term direction. We consider this at all times, measuring whether it is a value of concern.