People Driven Development

Saibaba Vinayakaya Namaha!

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“I love working with you guys each day. You guys are Awesome.” -Benji
“I love this place. I love working with y’all. This is by far the best place I’ve worked at.” - Jesse
“I love you guys and bananas” - Ben

Every time I hear such words.. i feel happy. Being happy is important to me. Every other thing is secondary.
Happiness comes from environments, from having good people around you, you doing the things you love, and just livin it up.
I feel so very thankful and grateful for each one of you in my life. You are all amazing people. So much to learn from. So much wisdom. So much fun. So human. Every time some friend says, come work for us.. i remember you all and your beautiful faces, smiles and hugs, the things we do and i say to myself.. is it worthy enough to miss so much awesomeness?

@telogical => People are important!

This is driven by the fact that we have adopted 7 principles that pertain not to software, not to data, not to technology, but to people. The CORE values of Telogical are centered around people. Not anything else. This is not surprising. It’s because, a core culture of Telogical is in the belief that people make things happen and so people are important.

ARETE, Respect, Intellectual Vigilance, Transparency, Collaboration Quotient, Service, Happiness are all people oriented.

They are expounded well enough at http://www.telogicalsystems.com/about/core-values/. I shall stay away from repetition.
At Telogical, the business revolves around a set of specific roles. Each role determines what a person does. And so we have Account Managers, Interaction Designers aka PMs, Engineers, Researchers, R&D and support, Management and the people we all worry about.. USERS.
People are dependent on one another. People need help, support and advise from one another. This is great! It makes our work more enjoyable, rather than just tinkering with machines, we have a human element to the work we do.
These are the important things for people at Telogical, from what i have observed, as the core thought process…

• Should be cared for & treated well
• Should grow
• Should be happy
• Should be valued
• Should be listened to
• Should be creative & innovative
• Should do the things they love
• Should be respected
• Should have a feel of success
• Should have bonuses, raises
• Should be transparent
  and most importantly…
• Should have fun
• Should have quality family time

As Engineers, on a day to day basis, most of our work is collaboration, communication, involves pairing, code reviews, discussions, arguments, learning, sharing, teaching one another.. and not so often, getting mad at one another. :) This is humanistic. Basic.
Technology, Best Practices, Data, Code, Tools, Principles, Processes are all well and good. Setting all those aside, we need an inversion of thought process. This is a very subtle, ‘please don’t judge me’, opinion.
The only reason we have such words of love spoken around is because of the people. We understand that we are among a set of people that love what they do and they do what they love, in addition to being amazing human beings.
In the sea of “DRIVEN” development/design keywords, such as TDD, BDD, FDD, DDD, ATDD, RDD, i would like to humbly throw in a new keyword. PDD. :).
“People Driven Development”

Inversion of ‘Thought Process’

People Driven Development (PDD) gives highest priority to people first. Just as TDD gives weight to tests first, and as features in FDD, and as Assigning the right Responsibility in RDD.
For me this term makes the most sense in our lieu of work. (Open source projects, guidelines, best practices, code contributions, technical explorations, musings, and discoveries, communities, sharing, learning, teaching, blogging)

“If our primary concern is ‘people’, then everything else will fall into place’ - Sameeri ;) :)

• We will write better code
• We will write better tests
• We will better learn & implement best practices
• We will make better design choices
• We will choose better processes
• We will have better systems in place to support one another.
• We will have better build processes
• We will have better code reviews
• We will pair better
• We will do a better job of commenting on cards (that is inherently a signal sent to PMs, who depend on the system. They are ‘Observers’ in the observer pattern. :))
• We will make better tool/technology adoptions
• We will listen, collaborate, better
• We will learn, share & teach
• And we shall always be mindful of the people, the environment and the values. :)

Better is a word of deliberate choice. Two words that mean the same that Ray always throws in, that i love very dearly now.. are Continuous Improvement & Kaizen. This is a philosophy of life.
At the end of the day, we will, as a team, have more fun!! :) That’s all we want to do.
Best,
Sameeri
PS:
As a co-worker, friend, family, i highly value your words and acts of kindness, love, encouragement, support, advise and i am grateful for each of you as a person in my life. Each day in life, i’m thankful. Thank you so much! It means so much. :)