We founded Extreme Forge in February 2011 with a clear idea in mind: to build a company that reflects the values of Extreme Programming, a methodology which has inspired us and contributed to our greatest successes over the last 10 years.
We strongly believe in the virtues of simplicity, be it in managing software projects, in choosing clear architectures and straightforward, robust designs and of course in our technological choices. Naturally, we aim to keep Extreme Forge a simple company which works efficiently and is understandable to its staff and customers.
Simple organisations, be they teams or companies, or simple architectures, can nevertheless be powerful, flexible and able to adapt to complex human or technical situations, if they introduce feedback mecanisms: listen, observe, exchange, measure reality and systematically feed this information into a system of continuous learning and improvement.
We have often observed that the key to a successful software project is good communication between all people involved, and the same is surely true of a company. In order to inform and to listen, we have a blog, are present on Twitter, and are active in several mailing lists and conferences related to Erlang and Agile. We communicate openly and honestly internally and with our customers.
Apart from its awesome effectiveness, the thing that certainly drew us to Extreme Programming was its culture of respect: respect for people which means communication is always honest and authentic; respect for everyone's experience and skills which means users can express their needs and priorities and developers are responsible for how they work. Our wish to work for a company that shows respect for its customers and employees, but also for society and the environment, was among the reasons we decided to become entrepreneurs.
Over the years it often took a certain amount of courage to hold onto our beliefs, to choose the unbeaten path of new methodologies and powerful but unusual technologies, to remain authentic and communicate openly, and we intend to show the same courage in the way we manage Extreme Forge and in bringing our projects and our customers' projects to success.
With all those goals in mind and so that our values would be fully reflected in the company, we decided to create a cooperative. For our co-workers this means a totally honest, open-book environment, a great deal of freedom and responsibility, and complete involvement in running the company. For our customers it is the guarantee of dealing with an upright, durably independent company and of finding in each person you interact with a responsible, committed individual concerned for the quality of our work.