Success

At OurWorld/ThreeFold, we believe the following qualities are essential to lead our project to success:

Perseverance

Entrepreneurs who can identify what caused the failure, figure out how to fix it, improve, and make changes will likely overcome problems and proceed. This ability to overcome, change, sometimes pivot, and move on to the next project is what leads entrepreneurs to success.

This means we accept:

• There is constant change; see Jungle story.
• Less thinking, more executing, is more important.
• Making mistakes is all good and even needed/normal.

Basically:

• think/plan for 80%
• Go, go, go
• Make mistakes
• Re-adjust
• Go, go, go
• Make mistakes
• ... (-:

Don't Think Too Much!

We have been brainwashed into thinking that thinking is the solution to everything.

We need to think just enough to ensure we have a good chance to do the right thing (20-80% rule) and execute properly.

• Intuition/feeling instead of over-thinking.
• Effective execution instead of over-analyzing.
• Discipline around processes.

Get out of the mind, into the heart, listen to your intuition (NOT EGO NOR FEAR).

We Need to Be a Responsive Organization

IMPORTANT: Read responsive org manifesto.

BAD = OLD	GOOD = Heart Driven
Profit	Purpose
Controlling	Empowering
Planning	Experimentation
Hierarchies	Networks
Privacy	Transparency

IMPORTANT: Read agile principles.

The Universe Is Big, We Are Part of a Big Living Organism

We believe in living organisms. Whatever team we work in operates as a circle, part of other bigger circles.

We constantly need to work with the other circles (our community) in mind:

• Use the forum as much as we can; point people to the forum to ask questions. We need to answer there as well.
• Don't just chat; make it persistent (forum, wiki) to allow the next person to find the required info.
• If there's an issue, don't ignore it. Create an issue on the right GitHub repo (all of us should do this, it's a must).
• ZOOM is not the solution for getting missing info. GitHub issues/questions or forum is!!! Everyone in the world has equal access to info.
• Share your day-to-day work with our community:
  • Product delivered/tested
  • Something cool you saw or read about
  • A cool place where you met other people
  • Some cool use case

WE ARE THE COMMUNITY, THE COMMUNITY IS US, WE GROW ALL TOGETHER

Community First

1. Our technical components as developed.
2. The system we use to collaborate/communicate with our community to let them work with our developed components.

Limit the usage of ad-hoc communication mechanisms like Zoom and chat. They are only useful at one point in time.

We need to work in a "GitHub" way, allowing thousands of people to collaborate on our products.

The Following Is Very Disrespectful to Our Community:

• Keeping info outdated
  • Solution: Move old info to an _archive or delete, remove links to it.
• Not marking when info is not usable yet
  • Solution: Move new info to a _beta folder.
• Not thinking enough about where to put information (disorganized)
  • Solution: Be disciplined.
• Doing everything in 1-group or 1-1 communication (e.g., Zoom). Make sure questions are answered in the right location.
  • Solution: Every communication we do should be usable for the larger community.
• Not using our tools and processes properly (or lacking discipline)
  • It's needed to allow our community to join and use the tools to collaborate. Everyone needs the chance to collaborate.

Iterative Growth

• What we don't know, we don't know; just let it be, wisdom will come.
• Don't overthink, just go to the next milestone. Don't expect a +6 months plan.
  • Just accept the fact that the only thing you know is the high-level vision.
• Focus on the next month and 3 months as the furthest scope.
  • If there is a further-term goal (e.g., launch of a project/product), create intermediate steps and focus on those.
• Make sure to work with stakeholders.
  • Can be investors, customers, or internal team.
  • Make sure you work on the right priorities.
• Religiously respect the 20-80% rule.
• It's not a sequential process; don't bet on one horse.
  • Always keep multiple paths open if possible.
  • Especially for important issues like funding and getting business in.
  • In case one path is a dead end, you can quickly switch to the other.
  • It's a parallel process.

Remember and live the Jungle story.

Dynamic/Agile Collaboration Is Everything, It Requires Discipline

Waterfall or holocracy methods do not work for a startup. Learning the tools, even if complicated, is a must.

• Teal is a good principle and works but cannot be implemented as holocracy.
  • Scrum/kanban works.
  • Holocracy is role-based and doesn't work for organizations that change too much.
• Discipline around the process is everything.
• It's not a pyramid, which means owners cannot choose their own collaboration tools.
• It's super important you understand the following concepts:
  • Team (scrum) lead: Help your team grow and adhere to the processes.
  • Owner: You're not a boss; you own a story or project. This doesn't necessarily make you a contributor.
  • Contributor: You're one of the people working on a story/feature request/bug/question/task/...
  • Stakeholder
  • Story
  • Checklist
  • Feature request/bug/question are not stories; they are part of a funnel that gets pushed through kanban or sprint (scrum).
• It's not about the tools; use what the company/group/community agreed upon, learn if needed.
  • If it feels complicated, maybe it's because there is no alternative.
  • It's more important to stick to the same tool. Learning that toolset may well be the most important thing your group/company needs.

The Core Values Keep a Startup Together

Don't take them lightly; they are not just a marketing thing.

See FreeFlow Goals & Values document. Please read; it's important. If it's not okay, let us know.

Not Everyone Is Made for a Startup or Growing Open Source Community

If you are in a startup and you don't agree with the above, then maybe you're not in the right spot.