Hey guys,

I'm sorry if this is a duplicate, but the question search terms are pretty generic.

I work at a small(ish) development firm. I say small, but the company is actually a fair size; however, I'm only the second full-time developer, as most past work has been organized around contractors.

I'm in a position to define internal project process and policy- obvious stuff like SCM and unit-testing. Methodology is outside the scope of the document I'm putting together, but I'd really like to push us in a leaner (and maybe even Agile?) direction.

I feel like I have plenty of good practice recommendations, but not enough solid motivation to make my document the spirit guide I'd like it to be. I've separated the document into "principles" and "recommendations". Recommendations have been easy to come up with. Use SCM, strive for 1-step, regularly scheduled builds, unit test first, document as you go... Listing the principles that are supposed to be informing these recommendations, though, has been rough.

I've come up with "tools work for us; we should never work for tools" and a hazy clause aimed at our QA (which has been overly manual) that I'd like to read "tedium is the root of all evil".

I don't want to miss an opportunity with this document to give us a good in-house start and maybe even push us toward Agile. What principles am I missing?