Prologue What you're about to read is not a manual. It’s not a how-to guide, not a manifesto, not even a rant. These are personal stories. Observations I’ve collected over years of working with different teams, in different companies, across different mindsets. Sometimes painful, sometimes enlightening, but mostly filled with the same quiet question: are we really doing this again? I’m not writing because I know the way.I’m writing because I’ve been lost too — and maybe this will help someone find clarity before the chaos catches up. If Everyone’s Responsible, No One Is A developer’s slow descent into processless madness Once upon a time, I thought processes were optional. We were a startup. Three of us. We moved fast, broke things, fixed them later — if we had time. No calendars. No sprint boards. No documentation. No ownership. Just Slack threads, scattered TODOs, and blind faith that someone, somewhere, was handling it. And somehow, it worked. Until it didn’t. One day I realized I wasn’t “moving fast” — I was just running in circles, burned out, juggling bugs, features, support, releases. I was the team. So was everyone else. And somehow — no one was. The Startup Phase: Cowboy Coding and Chaos Back then, we didn’t call it chaos. We called it “freedom.” No red tape. No ceremonies. No managers breathing down our necks. We wore multiple hats. Scratch that — we were the hat rack. One day I’m writing APIs. The next I’m firefighting a prod issue in infrastructure I didn’t build, don’t understand, and never touched before. But we shipped. Constantly. New features. New ideas. Hotfixes on Friday night. We moved fast. Broke things. Said we’d fix it later. Sometimes we even did. No retros, no planning, no handoffs — just faith. Tribal knowledge ruled the day. The onboarding doc was a Slack search and a shrug. Looking back, it wasn’t brave. It was unsustainable. People burned out. People left. And every time someone walked away, they took half the product’s logic with them. I didn’t see it then. I thought churn was just how tech worked. Now I know: when people leave and there’s no documentation, no process, and no shared understanding — you don’t just lose a teammate. You lose the map. Welcome to the Enterprise: The Culture Shock Then I joined a big company. Suddenly there were calendars. Standups. Sprint boards. Documentation. Meetings that had agendas. Teams that had roadmaps. It felt corporate. It felt rigid. It felt… like relief. No more guessing. No more chasing people for context. No more waking up to a critical alert caused by someone else’s “quick fix” that wasn’t reviewed, tested, or even announced. I started to breathe again. Processes weren’t a burden — they were scaffolding. They gave us rhythm. Predictability. A shared language. We weren’t just writing code. We were building software — together. The Relapse: Asynchronous Hell Then it happened. I moved again. Different product. Smaller team. Faster pace. More “startup vibes.” The mantras came back. “We don’t need processes, we’re flexible.” “Why sync when we can async?” “Everyone just picks up tasks — no need to overcomplicate.” But there was no alignment. No shared ownership. No planning. No process. Everyone was responsible — which meant no one really was. Tasks moved on the board. Commits went in. Releases happened. And yet: Nobody knew what others were doing. Nobody was accountable for the outcome. Decisions were undocumented, made ad-hoc, and often contradictory. I’d find myself playing detective. Chasing context. Begging for clarity. Writing messages that disappeared into the async void — hoping someone, someday, would respond before the sprint was over. The Illusion of Progress And yes — things still shipped. Sort of. Some features made it to prod. Some users were happy. The world didn’t end. But let’s be honest: If you can’t say what’s done, what’s broken, what’s blocked, or what’s next — are you really building anything? Or are you just shipping motion and calling it progress? Without alignment, without ownership, without processes, you’re not building a product — You’re surviving a storm, one untracked Jira ticket at a time. Contract-First: A Mindset, Not Just an API Thing This is where it all clicks. Contract-First isn’t just for APIs. It’s how teams should think. Every task, every agreement, every plan — it’s a contract. If we didn’t agree on what success looks like, we can’t be surprised when we fail to deliver it. No agreement = no ownership. No ownership = no accountability. No accountability = nothing you can rely on, scale, or fix. And sure — sometimes things work out. Sometimes a team full of brilliant, high-context people can move without a process and make magic. But those are outliers. For the rest of us: without process, there is no stability. Without structure, there is no predictability. Without agreement, there is no team — only noise. Final Thoughts: Processes Are Like Tests You can go without them. Until things break. And then you’ll wish you had them. A good process isn’t a cage. It’s a compass. It tells you where you’re going — and how to know when you’re lost. And if your process isn’t working? Change it. Kill it. Rewrite it. But have one. Because when the alerts go off, the tickets pile up, the team burns out, and no one knows who’s doing what — That’s not flexibility. That’s entropy wearing a hoodie. Prologue Prologue What you're about to read is not a manual. It’s not a how-to guide, not a manifesto, not even a rant. These are personal stories. Observations I’ve collected over years of working with different teams, in different companies, across different mindsets. Sometimes painful, sometimes enlightening, but mostly filled with the same quiet question: are we really doing this again? are we really doing this again? I’m not writing because I know the way.I’m writing because I’ve been lost too — and maybe this will help someone find clarity before the chaos catches up. If Everyone’s Responsible, No One Is If Everyone’s Responsible, No One Is A developer’s slow descent into processless madness A developer’s slow descent into processless madness Once upon a time, I thought processes were optional. We were a startup. Three of us. We moved fast, broke things, fixed them later — if we had time. No calendars. No sprint boards. No documentation. No ownership. Just Slack threads, scattered TODOs, and blind faith that someone, somewhere, was handling it. And somehow, it worked . worked Until it didn’t. One day I realized I wasn’t “moving fast” — I was just running in circles, burned out, juggling bugs, features, support, releases. I was the team. So was everyone else. And somehow — no one was. The Startup Phase: Cowboy Coding and Chaos The Startup Phase: Cowboy Coding and Chaos Back then, we didn’t call it chaos. We called it “freedom.” No red tape. No ceremonies. No managers breathing down our necks. We wore multiple hats. Scratch that — we were the hat rack. were One day I’m writing APIs. The next I’m firefighting a prod issue in infrastructure I didn’t build, don’t understand, and never touched before. But we shipped. Constantly. New features. New ideas. Hotfixes on Friday night. We moved fast. Broke things. Said we’d fix it later. Sometimes we even did. No retros, no planning, no handoffs — just faith. Tribal knowledge ruled the day. The onboarding doc was a Slack search and a shrug. Looking back, it wasn’t brave. It was unsustainable. People burned out. People left. And every time someone walked away, they took half the product’s logic with them. I didn’t see it then. I thought churn was just how tech worked. Now I know: when people leave and there’s no documentation, no process, and no shared understanding — you don’t just lose a teammate. You lose the map. you don’t just lose a teammate. You lose the map. Welcome to the Enterprise: The Culture Shock Welcome to the Enterprise: The Culture Shock Then I joined a big company. Suddenly there were calendars. Standups. Sprint boards. Documentation. Meetings that had agendas. Teams that had roadmaps. agendas. roadmaps. It felt corporate. It felt rigid. It felt… like relief. relief. No more guessing. No more chasing people for context. No more waking up to a critical alert caused by someone else’s “quick fix” that wasn’t reviewed, tested, or even announced. I started to breathe again. Processes weren’t a burden — they were scaffolding. They gave us rhythm. Predictability. A shared language. We weren’t just writing code. We were building software — together. We weren’t just writing code. We were building software — together. The Relapse: Asynchronous Hell The Relapse: Asynchronous Hell Then it happened. I moved again. Different product. Smaller team. Faster pace. More “startup vibes.” The mantras came back. “We don’t need processes, we’re flexible.” “Why sync when we can async?” “Everyone just picks up tasks — no need to overcomplicate.” But there was no alignment. No shared ownership. No planning. No process. Everyone was responsible — which meant no one really was. Tasks moved on the board. Commits went in. Releases happened. And yet: Nobody knew what others were doing. Nobody was accountable for the outcome. Decisions were undocumented, made ad-hoc, and often contradictory. Nobody knew what others were doing. Nobody was accountable for the outcome. Decisions were undocumented, made ad-hoc, and often contradictory. I’d find myself playing detective. Chasing context. Begging for clarity. Writing messages that disappeared into the async void — hoping someone, someday, would respond before the sprint was over. The Illusion of Progress The Illusion of Progress And yes — things still shipped . shipped Sort of. Some features made it to prod. Some users were happy. The world didn’t end. But let’s be honest: If you can’t say what’s done, what’s broken, what’s blocked, or what’s next — are you really building anything? Or are you just shipping motion and calling it progress? shipping motion and calling it progress? Without alignment, without ownership, without processes, you’re not building a product — You’re surviving a storm, one untracked Jira ticket at a time. Contract-First: A Mindset, Not Just an API Thing Contract-First: A Mindset, Not Just an API Thing This is where it all clicks. Contract-First isn’t just for APIs. Contract-First Contract-First It’s how teams should think. Every task, every agreement, every plan — it’s a contract. If we didn’t agree on what success looks like, we can’t be surprised when we fail to deliver it. If we didn’t agree on what success looks like, we can’t be surprised when we fail to deliver it. No agreement = no ownership. No ownership = no accountability. No accountability = nothing you can rely on, scale, or fix. And sure — sometimes things work out. Sometimes a team full of brilliant, high-context people can move without a process and make magic. But those are outliers. For the rest of us: without process, there is no stability. Without structure, there is no predictability. Without agreement, there is no team — only noise. noise. Final Thoughts: Processes Are Like Tests Final Thoughts: Processes Are Like Tests You can go without them. Until things break. And then you’ll wish you had them. A good process isn’t a cage. It’s a compass. It tells you where you’re going — and how to know when you’re lost. And if your process isn’t working? Change it. Kill it. Rewrite it. But have one. have one. Because when the alerts go off, the tickets pile up, the team burns out, and no one knows who’s doing what — That’s not flexibility. That’s entropy wearing a hoodie. entropy
