Abdul Qabiz on Web Technologies, Flash Platform, RIA, India

Most of us have heard about “Don’t live with broken windows” or “Broken Window Theory” in software world, through books (Pragmatic Programmers by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell) and other sources (wikipedia, blogs, articles, etc).

Like many others, I have also experienced that Broken Window Theory applies to many business and personal-life (and many others) other than software-development.

Over the time I have read books and articles, as listed below to learn more and apply in day to day life. You might following links useful.

• Fixing Broken Windows @ wikipedia
• Don’t Live with Broken Windows
• Broken Windows Theory in Software and Your Personal Life
• Chapter 14: The Ultimate Broken Window – Broken Windows, Broken Business (book)
• How Broken Windows can Kill a Business

In most common early start-up mistakes, Mark Suster talks about very interesting and insightful points. However, I feel like adding one more point, quite known but often taken granted, more specific to software or web start-ups.

If you are a software or web start-up, it’s really important to use the experience of founders (if they are come from technical background) or your core team to have following in order, as soon as possible.

Guidelines and best-practices: code, documentation (wiki), version-control (branching/tagging – when and how?), bug-tracking, testing (unit-tests, functional-tests), deployment, performance objectives and related stuff.

I would not go crazy (get distracted too much) about these initially but have these in place and encourage(mandatory – certain cases) everyone to contribute, follow, discuss and document. It’s lot easier to adapt things at an earlier stage rather than later.

I strongally recommend you to read Martin Fowler’s article Technical Debt to learn more about the importance of having things in order.