One of the most terrifying fun things that goes along with growing a company is adding additional staff. At some point, it gets to the point where you can't do it all. For some organizations, this will happen on Day One. With some other organizations, it will take months, years, or never happen.

There are some people/roles that can be added without an immediate effect on the customer. Adding an Office Manager or Accountant isn't likely to impact your customers directly. It means invoices might be generated/paid more quickly and calls/emails might be answered a bit faster, but the bigger impact is that it frees up your schedule to get back to the important stuff... building your systems. You have to have a lot of trust in these people as most of your most sensitive internal information will be available to them at any time. You have the tough decision of figuring out which information is necessary to do their job while restricting access to the unrelated information.

... show me!

The single most common reason why people sought out support for dotProject is that they didn't get it. Sometimes it was a simple misunderstanding of the terms, sometimes it simply wasn't seeing a key part, and sometimes it's just a difference in how people learn. We all expect people to learn the same ways as us or to figure things out themselves.

Well, that isn't always the case. And in fact, I see it as a sign of maturity and growth when a person/group reaches beyond their own needs and starts appealing to others. Within web2project, we've taken that step:

Towards that goal... web2project now has training videos!

While I am not the President or even have any official role in the DCPHP Developers' Group, I am one of the moderators on the mailing list. The list itself has really been alive and active as a place for discussions - as opposed to just announcements - for about 18 months.

It started off small with probably a half dozen people doing most of the talking. As other people realized that they could help others and had questions to ask, the traffic and number of voices grew. But about a year ago that I noticed something dangerous...

A few people had set themselves up as notoriously difficult to deal with or particularly clueless. Unfortunately, the tone of the list started to change. Instead of being the bright, intelligent people that some of us are known for being, the remarks started to get harsh and once in a while downright disrespectful.

A long, long time ago before I started CaseySoftware, I didn't understand the point of an introduction.  I considered it irrelevant and not all that important to day to day business, goals, or even your personal/professional standing...

I've thrown around the term more and more lately, sometimes it results in blank stares, sometimes knowing chuckles, but more often than not, it results in stories. 

For the handful of you who aren't familiar with the term, here you go:

Guerilla Development is when software development has to occur under the radar, off the books, without approval of the powers that be.  This can happen for a variety of reasons... it could be a prototype or proof of concept for a demo to get buy in, it could be because it's needed and there's not the official time/budget for it.  Or it could be that the people in charge are dumb.

No matter what...  it's always an interesting/fun thing to do.

A few years ago, I worked in an organization that used employee id's and SSN's as your  username/password for all web apps.  If there was a need to perform an action - eg. timesheet approval - for someone else, their manager could pull their information, log in, and take care of it.  Other than the obvious problem of using sensitive information in such a trivial way, it also gave the entire development team this information on every past and present employee of the company and gave you a set of credentials that couldn't be changed.

Two months ago, when I wrote on using LinkedIn to gain information on your competitors - titled "Open Source Intelligence: LinkedIn" - I expected no response. It's been an interesting and useful exercise of mine that I thought a few would get a kick out of... nothing more. Publicly, yes, that's exactly what has happened... but off the record, there's been quite a bit more going on. If you've contacted me so far, thanks. What I hope to share here are a few further tips on gathering useful information.

To make this clear, you're not going to find detailed information like system documentation or internal corporate policies. If you do manage to get that information, you may be in violation of laws or working with people who are violating them, so just forget about it. It's not worth the effort or the potential trouble.

Instead, find are the patterns between and among people.

How is it useful knowing that firm X has six Java developers and three bizdev guys? That in itself isn't. The useful information comes from the other key thing about LinkedIn... the recommendations. It all comes down to this:

Last week, when I started discussing the technology startup climate in DC (DC to Silicon Valley?), I started from a faulty premise, but not the one that trips up most. After reading a great historical analysis from SFGate and some further research and brainstorming, here's a slight correction to my previous post and some futher thoughts on how to improve things in DC.

Many people tend to peg the start of Silicon Valley to the foundation of HP in the infamous garage. True, the name wasn't attached to the area until 1971, so part of that is correct. Unfortunately, my linkage to the "Traitorous Eight" in the 1950's ignored the long and established history of the San Francisco region in the area of radio.

Long prior to the very existance of Fairchild Semiconductor - the creation of the Traitorous Eight - there was a vibrant tech community focused on and revolving around the creation and usage of radio. It brought brilliant researchers, government contracts, innovators, and investors from all over and began to sow the seeds for Silicon Valley. Oh, and this was in 1906...