Ten habits every modern company needs. A 30-minute self-audit to strengthen, streamline, and document your tech—building confidence and efficiency from day one.

You won’t solve—or even fully map—everything in half an hour. But using TECH10 as a focused guide, you’ll quickly surface the biggest gaps and walk away with a prioritized plan to close them.

Contact Us and we’ll help you put these habits in place.

The TECH10 Checklist

  1. Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). A second step on every critical account blocks most stolen-password attacks, transforming credential theft from a high-risk event into a manageable nuisance.
  2. Use a secure password & credential manager. Keep every login, passkey, and MFA code in one secure place across devices and browsers. Autofill securely speeds sign-in, breach alerts flag risky credentials, and you control who can access shared sensitive information.
  3. Configure email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). Correct DNS records prove mail is genuine, maximizes deliverability, keep you out of spam, and stop domain spoofing.
  4. Back up data & run security scans. Frequent, off-site backups plus automated vulnerability scans enable fast recovery and early risk detection.
  5. Inventory all third-party services & assets. A living list of SaaS, cloud accounts, and key devices reveals costs, ownership gaps, potential redundancies, and blind spots.
  6. Set up system monitoring & alerts. Uptime checks, metrics, and log alerts tell you when something breaks—before customers notice.
  7. Use separate environments or safe sandboxes. Test in dev/staging so unproven changes don’t crash production or corrupt real data.
  8. Follow a deployment/change checklist. Backup taken, tests passed, rollback ready—ship calmly and predictably.
  9. Maintain a project/work-management system. A shared board (Trello/Asana/Jira or your favorite project management software) ensures visibility, priorities, and ownership so nothing critical slips.
  10. Document your systems and processes. Map apps, data flows, and integrations for faster onboarding, easier troubleshooting, and smoother scaling.

Why TECH10?

Companies juggle numerous cross-cutting concerns—sales, marketing, and customer success; engineering, and DevOps; IT, security, and compliance; data and analytics; HR and recruiting; legal and finance—often on thin resources and tight timelines, where small gaps can quickly snowball into chaos.

TECH10 sits underneath all of it.

It’s the operational backbone that keeps risk low, momentum high, and context shared as the team grows. By getting these basics right early, you create a force multiplier: fewer fires, faster onboarding, smoother releases, and clearer accountability. In practice, TECH10 is disciplined hygiene—simple habits that compound into speed, confidence, and resilience.

No Silver Bullet

There isn’t one. Do the basics well, consistently. Closing TECH10 gaps turns scattered effort into steady progress and makes efficient scaling possible. The behaviors below make that possible.

Discipline

Founders set the tone: understand the TECH10 list, embrace it, and model the behaviors. Even when the work feels boring or “non-product,” insist it’s in the plan—these basics prevent fires later. Teams surface gaps, propose improvements, and keep TECH10 visible in day-to-day work. Investors reinforce the muscle by asking for a plan, setting milestones, and reviewing TECH10 status during quarterly board meetings. Shared expectations make these habits stick.

Execution

Time is your scarcest resource—and the only one you can’t replace. Don’t overthink it: pick a lightweight process and run it, then adjust as you learn. Own your calendar with scheduling and automation, protect deep-work blocks, say “no” often, stay flexible for true urgencies—and take care of yourself. Balance and boundaries power sustained output.

Eye on the Prize

Neglect TECH10 and efficiency erodes; friction and rework quietly tax every initiative. Growth slows as features, quality, hiring, and velocity all suffer without reliable foundations. Sales and marketing acceleration stalls if operations can’t absorb demand. Investment outcomes worsen when due diligence exposes gaps. Cybersecurity incidents escalate from nuisance to existential. Future compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001, etc.) becomes expensive and painful without today’s groundwork.

Applicability

Not every item will apply on day one. Adapt thoughtfully, but if you’re new to this terrain, start with TECH10 as written today. You’ll avoid unpleasant surprises, learn quickly, and fix something your future self will thank you for.

Next step: Ready to apply TECH10? Contact Us and we’ll help you put these habits in place.