Not every team is built to change the world. Curiosity Team just wanted to do good work, done right — in our own way. We aimed to work smart, respect each other’s time and energy, and stay curious along the way. We didn’t always have everything, but we had a work culture that no one can ever take from us.
How We Worked
Asynchronously and agile.
Meetings were our last resort. Everyone had their own rhythm — and that was perfectly fine. Instead of daily stand-ups, we had async check-ins on Slack. Instead of endless discussions, we relied on a well-documented Jira — our single source of truth.
- Add context to every task before starting work.
- Keep statuses updated and use comments for async refinement.
- The team board served as a visual daily stand-up.
Open communication.
No restricted access. Slack, Confluence, Jira — all open by default. We avoided side conversations and kept all discussions in the task’s context. Every meeting had to have a clear goal, an agenda, and public notes afterward. If not, it shouldn’t exist.
Granularity and iteration.
No big monster tasks. Each one needed to bring real value within a week. Small iterations meant frequent wins.
“Everything in your backlog is a bet.”
“Start finishing, finish starting.”
“If you have more than three priorities, you have none.”
Our Rituals
- Expectation Agreement at the start — define how we play and what to avoid.
- Bi-weekly retrospectives — with Parabol, voting, and clear action points.
- Async refinement — comments first, meetings only when absolutely needed.
- 1:1s every two weeks — follow up on previous actions, feedback, and NPS of cooperation.
- Quarterly team building — laid-back, good food, maybe a drink or two, no pressure.
We all knew that a calm, respectful pace always beats forced productivity.
Our Philosophy
The one thing we always remembered:
It’s just a job.
We didn’t get emotional about tasks. We saved emotions for real life — family, friends, and passions. Time off was sacred. Weekends were untouchable. Something came up? Just mark “Out of office” and move on.
And if someone tried to estimate a task for less than half a day — well, that was micromanagement, and we didn’t do that here.
That’s how the Curiosity Team worked.
Simply, respectfully, and with genuine care for each other — because, in the end, it was curiosity that built our best culture.