TEAMWORK GROUND RULES
There are three things that are important in general:
Ask: If a task is not clear, or more information is needed, please ask as soon
as possible. Asking is always ok. Doing the wrong thing (or doing nothing)
because you didn't ask is not ok.
Debrief: It's not "done" until you reported it done. This is often just a
one-sentence email to me or to the client, sometimes a "100%" mark in the task
list, or a ticket closed. It is done, completed or fixed only when whoever
needed it done knows about it.
Warn: If a deadline you know is important will likely be missed, warn me soon,
as the situation is evolving, and then we can usually figure something out. If
I have to learn at the moment of the deadline that it was missed, that's not
ok. If you are working on multiple projects with multiple project managers, or
if you're a freelancer, also warn me if your workload is above what you can
actually do, instead of not doing certain tasks.
Last but not least PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
When systems are in production, you need to be careful about what you do.
It's easy to get in a habit during development of making bugs and fixing them,
but in production they can have real impact. So we need to have a review
and testing process for all releases to production. Test everything, even
simple typo fixes, as they can sometimes make a page give a parse error.
In general, any bugs having to do with money can cause serious problems.
And simply having the production site down for a few hours can result in
thousands of dollars of lost revenue.
