At NeoDocto, we work in 6-week or 8-week cycles. A year is typically divided into six cycles. During Summer Hours, two are 8-week cycles, and the rest are 6-week cycles. This fixed cadence gives us an internal sense of urgency, acts as a scope hammer to keep projects from ballooning out of control, and provides a regular interval to decide what we're working on.

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The idea isn't that everything we ever decide to work on has to take six or eight weeks to complete. Rather, we should consider how we can divide large projects into smaller ones that can be completed in that amount of time, and how we can group smaller tasks into a manageable scope of work.

We take two weeks off between cycles to cool down. This is the time to deal with any bugs or minor issues that arise, write up what we worked on, and decide what we should work on next.

If you only watch the stream of latest activity scrolling along in NeoDocto, it's difficult to keep up with what everyone is doing and what it means.  The daily question of What did you work on today? provides the nitty gritty details, but as a personal narrative. They're a great way to start a conversation if you see someone working on something you're interested in or want to learn more about. 

Whether or not you work on product development, your voice and observations can help us decide what we should work on. Pitching is one way to exert this influence. Write up your idea for a new feature, a change to an existing feature, or any other product development you believe we should consider as a well-thought-out post (the more specific, the better). This allows the entire company to consider and respond to the idea, and then we'll have the idea encapsulated in a post that can be accessed at any time.

At NeoDocto, we have people working at all hours of the day and from all over the world. That alone makes enforcing a lot of tightly-coupled workflows during the day difficult, but that's a feature, not a bug. The majority of your work at NeoDocto should not require you to be in constant communication with someone throughout the day.
 

We want to be more project-oriented than functional. This means that a single project team should be able to move as independently as possible from idea to deployment.

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Managing at NeoDocto is a part-time job in addition to doing the actual work. This means that everyone at NeoDocto is responsible for managing themselves. People who do this well qualify as managers of one, and we strive for everyone in a senior position or higher to fully embody this principle.

We limit ourselves to a 40-hour work week (32-hours in the summer). Limiting our work hours forces us to prioritise the tasks that are truly important. A good night's sleep and a rich and rewarding life outside of work should not be sacrificed for a few extra hours at work.