The Tandberg Way [video]

Fantastic talk! Key engineering takeaways from The TANDBERG Way - principles for effective product development that built TANDBERG to be acquired by Cisco for $3.3bn:

  - Embrace chaos. Continuously observer and adapt, because you can't plan far ahead in a complex world.
  - Celebrate the whole organisation, not individuals or teams. Celebrate when things are tough (before launch), not after launch.
  - Engineering and sales focused. Aim for 90% "productives" vs 10% "non-productives".
  - Beware the Observer Effect: observing knowledge work disturbs it. Coders are more likely to add code than delete code while being observed, or to just think for 30 minutes.
  - Introduce slack (as in free time, not the chat app) to do things right. You can't be agile and responsive without slack.
  - Communication over documentation. Make the customer pay for documentation.
  - Beware the Sinclair Effect. Don't talk about upcoming products, or people won't buy what you have on offer.
  - Focus on execution. Ban innovation hackathons. When your ability to innovate exceeds your ability to execute, focus only on execution.
  - No time writing or detailed cost control. Specify working hours and holiday times and then let the employees take care of it.

Full list of principles @ 51:00. Book recommendations @ 18:58.

Wow, this explains a thing or two … I happen to work for one of those spin-offs he didn't mention (Appear TV).

I've never seen it written as a list like this, but it made me nod a lot. We have changed in some ways, but I feel the basic spirit lives on at Lysaker.

The best parts of this till-now unwritten culture is also something we strive for, in one way or another. Take communication: A colleague and I are going to hold a technical meetup … some time next month, but we won't reveal the theme yet.