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This repo has been moved to https://github.com/countable-web/ops-manual. We are keeping this old version to preserve links, but you should use the new one.

Countable Web Productions Inc Operations Manual

TODO: port this to use a documentation generator, like https://readthedocs.org/dashboard/

What Is This?

This is the Countable Web Productions Inc. operations manual. It's a living record of how our company works, and is constantly evolving as we learn. Our whole team proposes amendments in order to constantly improve the material here.

Like for an open source software project, our processes and other information assets are publicly available for anyone to use under the MIT license. However, just as an open source software project does not disclose its database contents, this repository does not include any of our clients' and employees' private data.

Purpose

First, why does this repository exist? The purpose of this repository is to document Countable's operations for convenient reference, discussion and amendment.

Whenever you find yourself saying something for a second time (to a second audience, or in a second situation), it is highly likely that you will end up saying it again and again in the future. To vastly improve the quality of the communication, and reduce the amount of time that you spend communicating it … write it down.
Then, the next time you need to communicate that message, you can simply share it in written form. If it is something that all members of the team should know and remember, put it in a company-wide Wiki. If it is truly seminal to the organization, post it on a wall for all to see.

-- "The Great CEO Within", By Matt Mochary

Second, why is it open source? To promote transparency.

Scope

This repo will contain:

  • Business processes and knowledge base.
  • The Articles of Incorporation and other general corporate documents. Countable is a CCPC, but it's possible some of these documents may be useful for other organization structures.
  • Document templates used by the company for accounting and legal.
  • We will not publish information here that would compromise the privacy or property of our employees, clients or customers. For example, filled timesheets, invoices and other documents with monetary specifics of other parties will not be filed here. For these, only empty templates will be provided.

What is Countable?

Countable is a Web Technology Solutions Development Firm. We build things with web technology. There are tens of thousands of companies that do this. What makes us different?

  • We are obsessed with feedback. A remote team, feedback loops are harder to establish and even more critical to our ability to deliver great work. At Countable, feedback is sacred, and everyone is encouraged to maximize thoughtful feedback to one another as much as possible. We want our clients to see our work as we're doing it and be as visible as possible.
  • We're built to address the 3 main failure modes of software projects (over budget, overdue, and incorrect requirements). We do this by prototying, the art of simulating an experience with the minimum effort.
  • We work hard to be transparent, interactive, and have fun.

Read about the purpose of Countable.

Who is Countable?

We are selective in order to embody our values. This starts with hiring, all the way to the kinds of partners we seek out. In the end, we want to bring together people to have a big impact by improving all the industries we engage with, through better technology designed by the end users themselves. Those users are the ones who understand their problems and need to given a voice to control the technology they depend on. Now that's a feedback loop!

Recruiting

Finding the right people is one of our biggest challenges, so we need every advantage we can find in this way.

Marketing

Helps us find the best partners and team members who share our passion.

Getting Started

If you're a new Countable team member, start here!

If you're a new client, start here!

Engineering

The purpose of this section is to standardize key (not all) product/engineering processes in order to improve the team's performance, and take advantage of an experience curve by eliminating arbitrary process differences.

Consulting

How to provide the best results for clients.

Operations

Contributing

If you want to suggest a change to Countable Web Productions, make a pull request. The rules:

  • Important: Never commit private data or protected intellectual property. Nothing specific to our employees, clients, or finances should go in here.
  • The easiest place to contribute an idea is by joining our company's board of advisors on reddit.
  • Organize by "context". The documents in here are intended to be actionable. So, for any document, place it with a name and folder structure that matches what someone is doing when they need this information. For example, a timesheet template should go in the GETTING_STARTED folder, since it will be used by new employees.
  • Link prolifically. Wherever you can, link words of your pages to other pages or other websites.
  • Keep it concise, to-the-point, actionable. If you do use an abstraction, provide a corresponding example.
  • Each page should state it's purpose for existing, as related to the company's mission. Clarity and utility over completeness. Try to maximize "usefulness density", or the total benefit (ie, in saved time, dollars) of the content divided by its length (in characters).
  • This repository is intended for a specific company (Countable Web Productions Inc.), if you want to use it for another company, please fork it.

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