In case you haven't been following along, I tend to talk quite a bit about web2project and its upcoming release.  At this point, the release is so close that a number of questions have popped up:

What features does it have?  What features doesn't it have?  Where are these features found, defined, and refined?  How do you determine any of those?  What is the process?  How do we get there from here?

These are all variations and nuances of:

What does the next version look like?

A few months ago, I heard an interesting idea about the 2nd Worst Developer.  It's wrapped up in a simple statement:

... the quality of a software system is proportional to the skills of the second worst programmer

While at first pass, that may seem to be a silly statement, but here's why:

... everyone on the team knows who the worst programmer is, so senior developers are closely monitoring everything that he does and cleaning up problems. The work of the second worst programmer is not monitored with that attention so he has the chance to do some real damage.

On small teams with short projects and even shorter deadlines, this problem is multiplied.  Not only are you dealing with overlooked problems, but you're dealing with less-than-perfect decisions consciously made to "get it launched".  Now you have two problems that compound on each other... Brandon Savage covers this one well in "Paying Down Technical Debt".

Any and all discussion and information in this post should be taken as professional commentary and analysis for a US-based audience, not legal advice.  Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice.  When in doubt, talk to an attorney.  When not in doubt, talk to an attorney.  Either way, do some research first and have intelligent questions for them.  It will save you time, money, and stress.

Every so often in my professional life, I get a Non-compete Agreement across my desk.  The vast majority of them are along the lines of "you can't solicit our customers, we can't solicit yours for N months/years".  A few are along the lines of "any inside information learned from us cannot be used for anything other than what we authorize".

I find both of these to be reasonable and normally sign them with little - if any - hesitancy.

It's been over three years since the last release of the RIsk Management Module, but due to popular demand, it is back.

This announces v3.0 of the Risk Management Module: available here.

Many people don't understand what Risk Management is, but oddly enough, Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield summed it up nicely:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

While I don't consider myself an economic genius, I like to think that I have an understanding of base principles*. I understand that - like almost anyone else - my resources are measurably finite. I have a bank account that tends to go down more often than it goes up and I have a clock that ticks away the seconds and minutes. It's because of all of this that a lack of basic logic drives me nuts.... like the Broken Window Fallacy.

To put it simply (my paraphrasing):

If a branch breaks my window, numerous things happen. I spend more money at Home Depot buying a new window. I spend more money on gas to get the window. I probably pay someone to install the window. And all of those people have more money to spend. Therefore, it is a net good for the economy.

Bzzt. Wrong. And here's the problem:

Ah, one of the joys of the new year is that everyone makes commitments that they're going to keep this year. It doesn't matter that they failed last year or the year before at the exact same thing going about it the exact same way... this year they're going to do it.

Well, this year in addition to the goals for CaseySoftware, I've set a trio of major goals for myself... one professional and the other two personal. Each one is a daily task that I've already been doing for a while. About a year ago, I adopted a simple practice of marking my calendar when the task got done.

I didn't really think of the implications of it until the New Year started this week... and read Quadzilla's post on How to Keep Your New Years Resolutions & Achieve all Your Goals:

You see, it’s easy to do things one day at a time or one moment at a time. That’s the secret of maintained willpower. As long as you don’t break the chain today, you’ll be fine (because tomorrow you can tell yourself the same thing).

Don’t break the chain.

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: