After my post last week on "The Broken Window Fallacy in Software", it was clear that there was a misunderstanding. In terms of Broken Windows, there are two types..

First, there's the Broken Window Fallacy which is an economic explanation which dates back to the 1850's. The principle idea - which I was building upon - is the concept that economic activity of any form is good for the economy as a whole. This completely ignores the fact that there are costs - often hidden - under any circumstances.

In the case of the Broken Window (or the "let's start fresh!" idea of software development), the primary actor in the situation loses control of their decision. They don't have the option of using the time/money/effort for something else, they must use it to return to the previous status quo.

Food for thought... If someone broke your window, it would be vandalism... what should we call it in software development?

Almost a month ago, my highly esteemed former colleague and the dotProject tech lead Adam Donnison asked an interesting question on his blog:

I'm often amused at the store people put in statistics. Forum post counts, bug counts, code commits, even lines of code are often touted as being indicative of some worth. The trouble is they are all very misleading. And what does it mean anyway?

When you're involved in a project of any size - Open Source or not - it's a question you have to consider. There are literally dozens of hundreds of articles on different ways of measuring someone's contributions:

Lines of code might work... but are you rewarding overly verbose or inefficient code?

Number of commits might work... but a single changeset could be a spelling fix or a small piece of functionality or an entirely new module.

Number of forum/mailing list posts... but being friendly or even unhelpful (or being in a flamewar) can skew this number without adding real value.

I generally don't use this space to get quite this personal, but after an enlightening conversation yesterday and this being Christmas Eve, I figured "why not?"

In a gross overgeneralization, one of the problems with an engineer mindset like mine is that we tend to follow formulas. We learn early on that formulas work, they're predictable, and we know how to interact with them. While I consider my ability to improve to be one of my most valuable talents, I find myself falling into formulas now and then in my personal life, but hadn't thought about it much in my professional life. So the conversation yesterday struck me. Here's the other half (and the important part) of the conversation:

I realized that when I give you specifics you stick to them

it's best to not give you specifics have you figure it our and let you have the room to explore and be creative

I need you on your toes

well...being a leader is finding what's best for those around you, although it might for a little while be tougher on you and on them

you are welcome...and it's what's best for all of us. I have to know that you can make the best decisions in my absence based on you not on just on what I would do or the guidelines provided...that's how the right decisions will be made

Welcome to the November 13, 2006 edition of carnival of the capitalists. This week I ended up trying something new... the crew over at Blog Carnival have some nifty tools to get things rolling a bit faster. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, welcome to CaseySoftware a major contributor and supporter of the Open Source community, PHP, dotProject and software development in general. Since this is a technology blog...

Technology:

Barry Welford presents 100 Million Websites - How Many To Go? posted at StayGoLinks, saying, "Jakob Nielsen points out that the Internet has now 'slowed down' to a mature growth rate of 25% per year. What seems to be unknown is how this growth rate splits between the Mobile Web and the regular Web."

I've noticed an odd occurance lately. It seems that a few times each and every week, I get emails from friends, acquaintenances, family, and even random people asking for advice on their business, their business plans, or often just their ideas. The generous and friendly ones invite me out for drinks or to lunch, but I realize that most of what I've shared with them has revolved around a handful of points. To further clarify and expand upon them, I thought I'd share them here and offer them up to the community for criticism and comment.

Disclaimers:
* If I don't know you, thanks for the consideration, but I'm not going to review your business plan. I may not even respond to you via email. I'm not trying to be rude, I'm protecting my time just as you would protect yours.
* I am not an attorney, so nothing here should be taken as legal advice.
* By "geek", I mean "highly esteemed technologist without regard to color coordination abilities". I wouldn't want to tick off the higher geek echelons. ;)

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's cover the basics: Getting Started.

After many recent threads about permissions "errors" in the dotProject forums, I've decided to describe one set of permissions here. This is not all of the permissions in effect here at CaseySoftware, but it is the main set used throughout daily usage. If you have questions, feel free to post them below.

Role: Project Worker
Non-Admin Modules - Allow - Access, Add, Delete, Edit, View
Companies - Deny - Access, Add, Delete, Edit, View
Reports - Allow - Access, Add, Delete, Edit, View

Don't worry, I'm not going to delve into the world of cat blogging, but I learned something here...

On Saturday morning, I put the kettle on to boil water for coffee and started making my breakfast. Our large fluffy orange cat sat on the other end of the counter next to the stove and was quietly eyeing my breakfast. If you've never seen a cat stalk their prey, it's an interesting experience. They hunch down, focus their eyes, turn their ears, swish their tails, and prepare their mighty leap. Everything was fine except for the fluffy swishing tail next to the stove...

Seeing all of this made me think of CaseySoftware and some of the goals and practices which I've followed so far. Am I so focused on a certain opportunities to the point of ignoring possible threats and risks coming from other directions? Are all of these actually threats or simply unrecognized opportunities for which we aren't prepared for?

After checking on his tail, I went back to my office and re-evaluated some things. I have a trio of places where all my tasking and priorities are managed. The first and most obvious is dotProject. This list is the most comprehensive by far and always has deadlines attached. The second list is managed via Basecamp. This is a general todo list without deadlines that describe overall items. Finally, I have a tried and true notebook which travels with me everywhere and is my immediately log during meetings, calls, etc.

In the meantime, there are some major dotProject and CaseySoftware/dotProject efforts happening simultaneously splitting my attention. Some are purely development-related, others are documentation-related, and others are purely support-related. While all are important and demonstrate a growing dotProject community, some have a great deal more potential and strength than others. Throughout this week, I have been reviewing priorities and analyzing the different projects to determine the best mix. I can't say that I've discovered the best combination or even that I'm complete, but it certainly got me thinking...

Just to let you know about the cat, he didn't ignite himself this time around. He has burned his nose on candles once or twice and still doesn't seem to get the idea...