Slack Manifesto

This extends the Agile manifesto, Small Scale Agile Manifesto, Agile Warfare Manifesto and the Software Craftsmanship manifesto and adds a personal viewpoint.

Profession over career

It is more important to become master of your craft then following your company’s career path

Community over Hermitage

It is more important to follow open standards and connect with community then to become the only blacksmith in town. Don’t live in an enclave!

Playing over Following Instructions

It is more important to learn and adapt than simple following instructions.

A detailed plan guides you in complex environments but you won’t learn much from and you cannot apply it to complex problems. Don’t mistake instructions for commands. Instructions are helpful an do come from authority, that know the domain, what to do and that are able to help you. Commands do come from people who demand requirements and don’t know the domain.

Freedom of Ideas over Enclosurements

It is more important to share and develop ideas together than to keep it in your secret chamber

Human evolution is more important than blocking progress like patents and therefore supporting financial maladaptive system. Business models can be social and beneficial to all.

Open Standards over Winding Pathes

It is important up to listen to community instead of following small island paths.

Technology as living organism over being a product

It is important more important to be part of tech culture than being a slave to sales

Treat software as living organism. There is always a band between culture and technology. As long as something is in use it has to be maintained. Today a CI takes care of newest builds and images being deployed (VMs and containers). Both are often competing forces in a company. Sales misconceptions is seeing a product. Engineers see tech culture but often not the tentacles of the financial system we’re living in. Demands on engineers are share to be cheap, fast and good at the same time. When pressure intensives salary often becomes compensation for personal suffering.

OpenSource Standards over Proprietary Trust

it is important to know what your software does. Companies trust in big names and fail again and again. Security Incidents. Hardly documented software. Hard to debug software. Often people are left alone and complaints hang in corporate spider webs. No contact persons, bad support and so on.

Personal Touch over Corporate Prison

It is more important to work the way you do best than one fits all solution. A streamlined tool set is important to interface with your colleagues and for processes themselves. But also it is important for the tool set used by a craftsman to let him customize tools to personal fit. Motivation and identification with your art is more important then destroying creativity by a bureaucratic enforcement of improper tools.