As this is a new run at Northern Webpreneur, I’m going back to scratch and using some bits and pieces from old posts, that I no longer have available. I had a series about 8 months ago, that together formed what I viewed as a Manifesto for my company, E.Data Studios. This post is a merge of all those six posts, with new thoughts within the whole thing. Warning: This is going to be very high-level stuff – no code to go along with it – sorry! I believe any knowledge based company needs a bit of this high-level vision stuff. I doesn’t have too be too long or complex. If not, anything that’s remotely relevant will become interesting, and when you get “The Boss”™ on board, you’re doing it. I’m not saying a company shouldn’t be open to explore opportunities, but it’s a fine line before you not paying enough attention to what the company should be doing.
Find a big problem
A great team (I’ll get to that part) only gets done as much change in the world as they aspire to. ” Shoot for the moon…” and such. I’m a big fan of Joel Spolsky and his Fog Creek Software, but I can’t help thinking – what would that company be doing if they took the same attitude, work ethics, methodology and the same brilliant minds, and tackled a problem that is orders of magnitude bigger than issue tracking / software project management. I think the first piece of the problem is to find a big problem to work on. Then a bigger on. Then, step up to an even bigger one, and you might be there. The human mind is very impressive once it start working on problems, and you have no right limiting yours to the small potato stuff. At least I don’t think I have that right (you might – that’s your decision), so I’m trying to find a big problem to solve.
Forget about good – be the best
I came across “An incomplete manifesto for growth” on the (in)famous blog Signal vs. Noise yesterday. Skimming through it there are some really good advice there – and some which is utter BS. The heading is borrowed from item nr. 2 on this list: “Forget about good”. I’m sorry – you get to redefine how good is measured to a certain degree, but you don’t get to ignore the fact that both me, you and everybody else have human needs to compare themselves to others, and the business they work in to others. But, in the literal sense of it, you should forget about being (pretty) good. You should aim to be the best and have / work in the best company in the history of man. The workday of a manager should be how she can improve the company even more. How she can make sure that it’s easier to get the very best people hired, and get them to stay on board for a long time. How these people can become even better at their jobs and how all small systems within the company can be running smoothly. And the same goes for everybody in the company: How to let this company be it’s best – and perform at its best.
Create a team
I am a big believer in small teams that can do great things. The best of the best can do so much more individually than a crew of mediocre people doing the same job. You have all seen them – some people just seem so much better at a job than everybody that’s around them. And they thrive on having people as good as themselves around. So, put as few of these as possible together, and sparks will fly. There will be disagreements, quite possibly some strong ones, but good results will come from these. And as long as everybody can manage to have a laugh together afterwards, you’re fine.
Small teams doesn’t waste unneccessary resources communcating or coordinating. Less meetings, less looking at each others for guidance, less of pretty much anything bad.
A great place to work
This is a bit more of “be the best” zen from above. And, heads-up, I said I’m a fan of Joel Spolsky, and much of this is inspired by what he writes. The office of a great company should make everyone want to run, not walk to work. (Cars is out of the question in this carbon-neutreal era 
). Everybody equiped with the best equipment that they can get a hold of for their tasks. And of course, more difficult to measure: A great work environment.
KISS
Well, beyond that kissing the right person maks you feel good – this is a well-know acronym for “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”. Albert Einstein said it like this: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler”. That goes for the whole schebang that you’re doing. The source code, the business processes and logic, and even decisions. If you design a software design that’s easy to follow, people working on it will be more productive. If you clean out bad code, aka refactor, it will be easier to work more on that code. Don’t get me started on in-code comments – do both: make your code self explanitory, and then comment it in a way that let people read code and/or comment as they please. I digress. Create the minimum amount of administrative work possible, no matter how easy it is, it will take time away from more fun stuff.
Learn
Get books – the paper kind, and make sure everybody has a reading list. Then take some time to explore or discuss what you have read. Try out new techniques in the real world of test servers. Read about things, talk about things, and try them out. Preferrably in a good mix of new and old – something you know quite well, and something you don’t really know at all. That way, everybody improves.
Have fun – love what you’re doing
The final item on my list. No matter how facy office you got, no matter how interesting a problem you are working on, and no matter what it pays, there is no substitue for a labor of love. That includes having fun with your co-workers by the way. It means laugh out loud at something strange you see in a YouTube video, and it means getting excited about small stuff. That’s how the hours at work doesn’t feel like hours, but like minutes, and you forget to go home for dinner until someone calls and asks why you’re late.
These are what I belive to be determening criterias for creating business sucess. You won’t succeed on these alone, but you’ll be well on your way.