Values

Summary

Our values reflect what we believe in and inform how we make decisions.

Learn and Adapt

Dendron helps humans build upon the knowledge of the ages. This means learning from past mistakes and building on top of what has come before.

We take best practices from the places we admire and adapt them for current realities. When implementing new functionality, instead of not invented here, we look to build on what already exists.

This is not a one-off process but something that we work at each and every day.

80/20

In many situations, 20% of the work accounts for 80% of the output. This is also known as the Pareto Principle.

This could be finding a good enough solution for an intractable problem or refining a document down to just the key points - we focus on doing work that has the highest impact.

Iterate

The perfect is the enemy of the shipped. We strive to do great work but we will do it incrementally instead of waiting for something to be perfect. We prioritize ruthlessly, delivering the right things with the right quality in a timely fashion.

Iteration means that we will hit the deadline but are flexible about the scope. It's okay and also encouraged to have multiple phases for any individual feature.

Close the Loop

Whether we are working on features or improving processes, the job isn't done until value has been delivered.

That means just shipping the feature isn't enough - our users need to be able to adapt and get value from the feature in their daily workflow.

Community Focus

Dendron wouldn't exist without our strong community. Our north star is meaningfully improving the lives of everyone who uses Dendron.

This means listening closely to what our users have to say, making sure everyone can have a voice, and making decisions based on whether it will be beneficial for our users.

When defining community, this means both our direct users as well as people on the Dendron team.

Pass it Forward

We aim to leave things in a better state than when we found it. Whether that's code, documentation, best practices, or personal development, we strive to continuously improve the things that we see.

This means creating standard operating procedures to spread best practices, documenting things so that others can find them, and continuously driving change to make existing things better.

This also means working in the open so that everyone can benefit from our learnings - Dendron is built on the work that has come before us and we like to make it possible for others to build upon the work that we do.

Keep no False Idols

The only constant in the universe is change. As we establish best practices and ways of doing it, we need to remember that things change and what might have worked yesterday might no longer be relevant today.

This means that while we have ways of doing things, those ways can change and because we've always done it this way is never a good justification for not considering changing.


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