This is the handbook for the Ansible Cloud Content Team. It contains information about how we work as a team, and is guided by a few high level principles:
- Everything we do should be open.
- Documentation comes first.
- Asynchronous communication should be the default.
It lives in Github because this is where we work, and because the review process is how we work. The handbook is inspired by the Gitlab handbook.
When we write software we do so upstream and in the open. The processes we use and decisions we make have a significant impact on the software we develop. Those processes and decisions should be subject to the same scrutiny as our code. While there may be some things that can't be public for business reasons, this should be the exception.
Undocumented processes and decisions are unfortunately the norm in most organizations. This lack of documentation makes it harder to onboard new employees, leads to confusion about how to proceed with important decisions, and encourages us to keep reinventing the wheel because we lack a common understanding about how we should work. By making documentation the first thing we do, it forces us to agree as a team about how we work before we make any of those changes a part of our daily practice. The handbook should never be out of date, because we don't change the way we work until we have changed the handbook.
The Cloud Content Team spans multiple continents covering a wide range of timezones. When we rely on synchronous conversations to make decisions, people get left out. The tools that are used to have those conversations are not designed for permanence, and context gets lost. When we move these conversations to Github, we allow everyone to participate and create a written historical context for our decisions.
Create a PR to this repo with your proposed changes. While a conversation about a change may originate in Slack or elsewhere, try and steer those discussions to comments on a PR here as early as possible.