The Right People
Everything starts with hiring the right people. We want people that have an entrepreneurial spirit. The person that enjoys what they do and assumes tasks because it is what they believe needs to be done and not only because the task was handed to them. This approach will result in a higher level of dedication and greater quality of work. Passion is important.  

Programming is creative work. As such, you must critique every programmer based on metrics that impact the final results. Our team is looking at three elements to gauge success, including engagement, progress, and code quality.

Engagement is the programmer’s ability to communicate with other team members to ensure efforts are contributing to the progress of the team and that other team members can easily inquire about the nature of the programmer’s current focus. Engagement can be guaged by the use of Campfire (group chat), Basecamp (project tracking), Issues (bug tracking), github commit notes & timecard, and participating in pair programming.

Progress is the team’s effectivness at setting clear sprints and the individuals contributions to achieving the sprints goals by the agreed timeline. Progress can be tracked by Basecamp using completed to-dos and milestone completion. 

Code Quality is the robustness of the code created by an individual and the team. Achieving code quality is easily noticeable on the production web application which will have faster response times and lower error rates. Code Quality can be gauged by proper use of test code, New Relic (error tracking and response time rating), and Issues relating to previously written code.