Company Approach

There are many practices in most companies which infuriate me, because they are obviously customer-service or efficiency killers. In BaziCloud, the worst offenders are discliplinary offences because a much better method is supported by tools and automations.

Markdown Everywhere - No WYSIWYG Editors

Vast amount of time is wasted by people fiddling with layouts to make text look better, instead of writing good text. Markdown is just the text with a few symbols added to mark headings, tables and highlighting. It can be converted automatically to any required format, and, because of its use as the default format for LLM tools, is future proof.

So Markdown is to be used for all documents, with two exceptions:

• marketing brochures - which will be formatted by agencies, not in-house
• websites which require HTML. Documentation websites will be written in Markdown and auto-converted to HTML.

If there is a feature you need then is not available then the dev team will add it from you because it will also be useful for the customers.

Meetings are a poor excuse for not working

Most of the time, meetings achieve next to nothing and take a lot of time to do it. I have seen good people and organisations accomplish little of their potential because they are stuck in meetings for over 50%+ of their working lives. The worst offenders are Progress Meetings, which stop progress to do very badly something that can be achieved with a good online kanban or similar app (see below on on-line working).

If a huge technical problem needs to brains of multiple experts, get them together to work on it - that could be called a meeting and is acceptable to us.

All other types of meetings have a better on-line equivalent:

As a general rule, if staff need to know something, then make it a Moodle course, with a test at the end (See references on Practised Retrieval). If they do not need to know, then do NOT waste their time and company time by making them watch something irrelavant.

No-one has an email address; Functional Addresses only

Email is the worst form of business communication. It is insecure at its core, has no delivery record and is now swamped by SPAM. It is designed for person-to-person and hence incompatible with a modern business where waiting for the person you dealt with before is totally unacceptable.

Each department or business function has an email address, e.g. support, HR or finance. Email to and from this address are managed by a team using an appropriate tool, preferably an email-to-ticket application or at least a team inbox application.

Internal communication should be either by voice (in-person or VoIP calls) or by chat messages. This is the best way to get a quick answer to a question, anything else should be either raised as a ticket or part of a project and hence in the project task list.

Working From Home

Offices are hard to get to either because they are the wrong side of town (for some people) or in the centre of a congested town for others. This company wants the best team members wherever they are, so meeting in the central location is counter-productive in most situations. So a real office is a bad idea, an excuse for poor managers to see you regularly instead of managing the business. I prefer that people work somewhere easy to get to and that is usually home. For some this may not work, in which case find a local shared office space, the business will normally cover any costs for you.

The flip-side of not needing to commute, is that you are required, as part of your contract, to update the progress on your tasks and tickets at least twice a day. Your manager cannot do their job if they cannot see what you are doing, and what you are progressing or stuck on. This is non-negotiable; lack of regular updating of managers, tasks and tickets is a disciplinary offense (for both team members and managers).

On a similar note, I would expect most managers to have regular short one-to-one meetings with everyone in their team, see the next paragraph.

Looking After Our Human Resources

In the bad old days, personnel departments were renamed Human Resources, without actually changing to belief that you are the most important part of the business. We need to make sure you are able to work your best on projects you enjoy and can contribute great work for our customers.

There are no silly rules to slow you down; no pointless mandatory training courses or assumptions that you are not to be trusted.

Problems, issues, blockers etc are something your managers and I really want to solve, because our success relies on your work. And, because usually, it is the right thing to do.

If it isn’t a task or ticket Do not do it

Your manager and all of the other managers are expected plan projects and manage the prioritisation of new work and fixes. The company also needs this to continue whether the original manager is available or not. To manage a distributed team of experts, the managers need to know what is being done, so this principle is to ensure that it is all known to both sides and me (I have access to all tickets and task boards).

To make this work, we insist that all work is part of either a ticket or a task in a project plan. If it is worth doing it is on a task board or ticket, if it is not, it is a waste of time and MUST not be done.

Time spent on non-ticket/ task work is classified as personal time. This is fine as long as it does not interfere with real work; please always ensure you do your hours.

We work in the Cloud

No-one ever lost a data centre. No-one ever stole a whole data centre. Network-shared folders are safer than the hard-drive on your desk. If your work is not stored in a shared, cloud location then:

• it is not safe from failures and accidents,
• you do not think it is good enough to protect in the safest place you know,
• so everyone else will assume your work is not good enough to have the BaziCloud name on it.

Work on it in the cloud; if this is not possible, sync it regularly, at least every 3 hours. If you do not know how, raise a ticket.

Work as if your name is on everything you do - it is

All work is kept in the cloud, uploaded with your work-id on it. I want each of you to be recognised and rewarded for the great work you do.

There are no shared logins or system accounts making changes. We do not operate a blame culture, but we do expect team members to fix their own mistakes/ bugs. I do not want to fix bugs, I want to work on the new shiny stuff; I assume most people are the same. So get it right and make sure documentation contains any limitations we should know about for the future.

Documentation is vital

One of the many benefits of markdown is that it is quick and easy to document what you have done and how it works. Most systems require a certain level of documentation to be successfully submitted. This ensures that anyone can pickup the work later to enhance it without having to quiz you. If someone has to ask how it works and the answer is that you cannot remember and it is not documented, then managers will know the documentation was insufficient. The shiny new projects are more likely to go team members who are not fixing their old code and completing documentation on old work.

Test first then test last

The benefits of TDD are well known and documented. BaziCloud totally adopts a TDD approach wherever possible. If it cannot be tested then:

• flag the un-testible features to your manager,
• they will raise the issue so we can improve the testing capabilities of the organisation,
• write extra documentation, with all testing you could do.

Weekly Team Coffee Meetings

This one comes from my wife and started during 2020 and lockdowns. She managed a distributed team; even those who often met a subset regularly in their office had lost that contact and connection, so she started these …

At least one a week, each team will an online video call with no work purpose. It is a chance to chat about anything you like, from favourite biscuits to weekend plans. The aim is to make people smile and find out a little more about your fellow team members. I am a coffee drinker, but coffee is not compulsory.

Put aside any mis-givings and give it a go. Most of us have done similar during a coffee-break when in the office. Dad-jokes welcome!

Team Socials

Although not compulsory, we encourage all staff to join most of the team socials. It will be a mix of things to ensure there is something for everyone eventually. It is by meeting face-to-face away from work that we get a better understanding of who is who, what their strengths and weaknesses are and how to get the best out of them. To you all, I hope you put the effort in to join with those that you can.

This is an extension to the Team Coffee Meetings and a way to thank you all.