Acknowledgements

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, Basecamp’s founders, planted many of the seeds for this book. It is informed by their values, Basecamp’s culture, and fifteen years of collaborative trial-and-error.

Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek made pivotal contributions. This book wouldn’t have come together without their help.

Yaneer Bar-Yam’s lectures at the New England Complex Systems Institute helped me structure the method.

The expert designers and programmers at Basecamp tried, tested, and improved these techniques over the years to ship real projects. Their efforts make this a book of practice, not theory.