A funny thing happened on the way to launching my own consultancy...

Industrial Logic and I had too much in common to remain separate.

We are all

• looking for the next big step forward
• serious about good code
• into developing skillful programmers
• into measurement
• true believers in incrementalism

What’s more interesting is what I learned after joining.

We’re all in this together

I’m an old hand at remote pair programming, but here we talk to each other more often than at any collocated company I’ve seen. I’ve nearly always got someone in skype and a few emails flying.

We’re all customer-facing

In addition to our services, our e-learning software allows our users to interact with all of our programmers and coaches. None of us are “insulated” from users.

We’re all experienced developers

At Industrial Logic, anyone with less than 12 years in the business is “the new guy.” It’s not just about longevity, though; everyone here is well-known for their work as programmers, coaches, and writers.

We’re doing continuous delivery

We ship software several times a day. It changes everything. We rely more on our automated test suite and Continuous Integration. We have more immediacy, less stress, less need for long-term planning. Any work in code or content is done with the expectation that it could go out immediately and must cause no problems.

We push limits

• Huge product backlog? Nope.
• Planning meetings? Don’t need them anymore.
• Organization structure? Flat like a pancake.
• Delivery? Continuous.
• Value? Continually optimized.
• Perfect? Not yet, but we’re working on it.

Our company is an ongoing experiment in just how lean and agile a team of developers can be.

This may well be what the Agile Manifesto was talking about all along. Here it is the fabric of our days, the water we swim in, and the air we breathe.