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Alice Bartlett Origami Lead, Financial Times @alicebartlett Can’t you make it more like Bootstrap? Considerations for building front end systems

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Hello

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I’m from the FINANCIAL TIMES

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I lead a project at the FT called Origami. @alicebartlett

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Origami is a 5 person team who develop frontend tools and services at the FT @alicebartlett

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The Origami team has 2 aims: 1. Unify frontend styles across the FT 2. Reduce time spent repeating work @alicebartlett

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Components, tools and services @alicebartlett

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There are lots of companies that have projects similar to Origami. @alicebartlett

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http://getbootstrap.com/

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https://www.lightningdesignsystem.com/

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https://rizzo.lonelyplanet.com/styleguide/design-elements/colours

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https://www.futurelearn.com/pattern-library

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Today I’m going to talk about Origami and some of these projects too @alicebartlett

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This is not a talk about design systems

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This is about what you build once you have your design system @alicebartlett

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THIS IS ABOUT SOFTWARE

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FIRST: FINANCIAL TIMES

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ft.com

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This is ft.com

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This design is known as “Falcon”

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ft.com

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aboutus.ft.com

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ftchinese.com

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The FT has a lot of other sites… @alicebartlett

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I don’t know how many frontend apps the FT has, it’s that many

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These designs currently share little or no code @alicebartlett

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Even though many of them have the same ui design @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett shared design shared code

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@alicebartlett shared design & shared code

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@alicebartlett This is the close button for an overlay in the Falcon design

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button > span (CSS bg) a (x sign) a (CSS bg) a > img

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@alicebartlett There are four different versions of this live on FT.com.

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@alicebartlett Four different implementations of the same thing

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And those are things we can control the design for… @alicebartlett

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We have three different versions of the twitter logo on ft.com

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THE FT’S SITE IS CHANGING

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FT.com

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next.ft.com

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This is the opportunity for a generational shift in the way we build websites at the FT @alicebartlett

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The Origami team has 2 aims: 1. Unify frontend styles across the FT 2. Reduce time spent repeating work @alicebartlett

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DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING @alicebartlett

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WHAT’S IN A COMPONENT SYSTEM?

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1. Components 2. Tools 3. Documentation @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett Components

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@alicebartlett A component is some combination of CSS, HTML and JavaScript .css .html .js

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@alicebartlett .css .html .js

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@alicebartlett Components Application code Website .css .html .js .rb

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb

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Let’s have a look at an Origami specific example… @alicebartlett

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So that’s ads, header, icons, date, fonts, grid, tracking, colours, buttons

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There’s a lot of overlap between Origami, Lonely Planet’s Rizzo, or FutureLearn’s pattern library @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett Tools Components

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb QUITE HARD

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb

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https://www.futurelearn.com/

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https://www.futurelearn.com/pattern-library

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb

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@alicebartlett Website Components and Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb

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This is the simplest way to use an abstracted design system in your product. @alicebartlett

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The best tooling is no tooling* @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb QUITE HARD

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@alicebartlett Now tooling becomes important

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@alicebartlett Javascript CSS HTML

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code Tools .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb

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If your sites are using the same languages… @alicebartlett

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Then you can just make your system work for that stack. @alicebartlett

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If your sites use ruby, then a gem is an excellent way to deal with this problem @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code Tools .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb

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http://rizzo.lonelyplanet.com/styleguide/

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$ gem install rizzo @alicebartlett Step 1:

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http://engineering.lonelyplanet.com/2014/05/18/a-maintainable-styleguide.html // Input = ui_component("forms/search", { label: “Search" }) Step 2:

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@alicebartlett ✔ Javascript ✔ CSS ✔ HTML

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// Input = ui_component("forms/search", { label: “Search" }) http://engineering.lonelyplanet.com/2014/05/18/a-maintainable-styleguide.html This is SO NEAT Step 2:

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This is also how GOV.UK’s component’s system works. (Inspired by Rizzo!) @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code Tools .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb BUT WAIT…

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code Tools .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb WHAT IF YOUR CONSUMING APPLICATIONS AREN’T ALL IN THE SAME LANGUAGE

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb QUITE HARD

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Option 1: Tools for every language @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code Tools .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .py .rb .rb .rb .java

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Maintaining a toolset like this is a lot of work… @alicebartlett

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Option 2: Lose HTML delivery @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett ✔ Javascript ✔ CSS ✘ HTML

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You can resolve the distribution of CSS and JS quite easily… @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett

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Bower, npm @alicebartlett

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But templates… @alicebartlett

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There is no good way to let people include (customisable) templates in their projects @alicebartlett

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You have to tell users to copy and paste @alicebartlett

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This is a really bad idea… @alicebartlett

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People leave off or remove things they don’t understand, ARIA attributes, microformats @alicebartlett

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You can never change a class name again @alicebartlett

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You can’t automatically push out changes to components @alicebartlett

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You’re duplicating code @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett Components Websites! Application code .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb .rb NO GOOD OPTIONS

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1. Build and maintain a tool for every language 2. Drop HTML distribution @alicebartlett

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A terrible choice

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Origami uses copy/paste

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@alicebartlett ✔ Javascript ✔ CSS ✘ HTML

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IF ONLY THERE WAS A SPEC OR SUITE OF SPECS THAT HANDLED DISTRIBUTION OF HTML…

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Yeah, we’re waiting for web components

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@alicebartlett ✔ Javascript ✔ CSS ✘ HTML

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The Origami Build Service @alicebartlett

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It’s basically a CDN @alicebartlett

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It’s basically a CDN OK it’s a bit cleverer than a CDN @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett

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The Build Service takes any combination of modules and returns their CSS and JavaScript @alicebartlett

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For CSS: - Concatenates module Sass - Runs an auto-prefixer across it - Compiles it - Minifies it - Returns it @alicebartlett

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For JS: - Concatenates all module JS - Babel - Minifies it - Returns it @alicebartlett

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People love this @alicebartlett

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239,318,470 Build Service requests for April 12 - May 12 via Akamai

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But some people want more control @alicebartlett

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We took the code behind the Build Service, and made it an npm package called Origami Build Tools @alicebartlett

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FT.com has a release cycle of 3 months, they use the Build Service @alicebartlett

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next.ft.com want a lot more control over their build process, they use Origami Build Tools @alicebartlett

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So we have these awesome tools that mean, no matter what your release cycle is, or your tech stack, you can use Origami @alicebartlett

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But that’s not enough. @alicebartlett

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@alicebartlett Docs Tools Components

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FREE MARKET SOFTWARE TEAMS

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… teams are allowed and encouraged to pick the best value tools for the job at hand, be they things developed and supported by internal teams or external to the company. Matt Chadburn, Principal Developer http://matt.chadburn.co.uk/notes/teams-as-services.html

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So Origami is competing with any other tool, or the option to not use Origami at all. @alicebartlett

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This keeps us pretty focussed @alicebartlett

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When I joined the FT in October, I did some user research on Origami @alicebartlett

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I interviewed people around the business, developers, designers and journalists, product managers @alicebartlett

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And what people told me was mostly positive. @alicebartlett

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But I did discover one problem. Our documentation was confusing people or boring them @alicebartlett

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http://origami.ft.com

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http://registry.origami.ft.com

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http://github.com/financial-times/o-gallery

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HOW THE F**K AM I SUPPOSED TO FIND TIME TO READ ALL OF THIS STUFF? an anonymous Origami user

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I wish this was just more like bootstrap’s documentation an anonymous Origami user

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http://getbootstrap.com/getting-started/

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Using Origami is as easy as pasting a tag into your @alicebartlett

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It’s as easy as Bootstrap @alicebartlett

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https://www.polymer-project.org/1.0/

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We re-wrote our documentation using the principles used to write Django’s docs @alicebartlett

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https://jacobian.org/writing/great-documentation/

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We have a documentation style guide, just like we have guides for JavaScript and Sass @alicebartlett

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https://github.com/financial-times/ft-origami

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Along the same track as documentation, you’ll find marketing. @alicebartlett

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Marketing is how you convince people to use your stuff without them having to think too hard about it @alicebartlett

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The amount of marketing you have to do should scale with the number of users you have (or want) @alicebartlett

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http://getbootstrap.com/

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https://www.lightningdesignsystem.com/

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https://www.futurelearn.com/pattern-library

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Marketing isn’t just pretty websites @alicebartlett

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And at a certain scale, you’ll need a communications plan for new releases. @alicebartlett

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You should publish your incident reports @alicebartlett

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With free market software teams, this matters @alicebartlett

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Documentation isn’t complicated. It’s just hard.

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People won’t fight you, they’ll just ignore you

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Conclusion: 1. Components at the centre 2. Make the simplest tool for the job (maybe no tools at all!) 3. Care for your documentation @alicebartlett

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Alice Bartlett Origami Lead, Financial Times @alicebartlett Thanks