The dangers of delivery
My latest Baseline column talks about the risks that follow a successful IT project: But sometimes with projects that really shouldn’t succeed—that are attempting too much, too fast, with too many...
View ArticleSelf-defeating choices in IT project management
I have a new Baseline column up on the tendency of large organizations to reject the best solutions for a troubled IT project: The consultants, usually with the help of the employees in the trenches,...
View ArticlePushing the right IT solution
Yes, it’s my latest Baseline column: Last week, I talked about some of the reasons why large organizations often reject the best solutions for a troubled IT project: fear, pride, budget, and the...
View ArticleBuy vs. Build — the eternal dilemma
If it’s Friday, it must be another Baseline column. This one talks about the issues surrounding whether to build or buy software: The other day, an IT colleague of mine mentioned a conflict at a...
View ArticleTwo new Baseline columns up
The first column, “Second Class Software Quality for Major IT Projects”, talks about the curious fact that organizations are willing to spend millions, tens of millions, even hundred of millions of...
View ArticleActive risk management in IT projects
First, my apologies for the slow posting here and at brucefwebster.com over the past few months. It’s pretty bad when my last two posts have each covered my last two Baseline columns. But I’ve got some...
View ArticleHanging on to your IT staff
I’ve written previously about the “Dead Sea effect“, in which your best IT engineers and managers leave over time, leaving behind an IT staff that is slowly becoming less competent and effective....
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Five books every IT manager should read…right now
My latest Baseline column is up, and it talks about why you should read these five books now, if you haven’t already…and if you have read them, you should probably re-read them. ..bruce..
View ArticleCoping with the economic downturn
[Cross-posted from brucefwebster.com] I’m currently writing a series of columns for Baseline on how to deal with frozen or reduced IT budgets due to the current economic troubles. Here are the first...
View ArticleFireflies, conveyor belts, and landfill
My newest Baseline column is up, and in it, I talk about technology lifecycles that can cause you grief: Each technology is on its own product lifecycle, which may or may not match with your...
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Why Ballmer Failed
Derek Thompson over at the Atlantic has put together a very useful, brief article outlining what has happened at Microsoft under Steve Ballmer’s watch. Most significant is this graph: That tells the...
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Why government IT projects are so prone to failure or overruns
Joseph Marks over at Government Executive Magazine has an excellent article on the propensity of government IT projects to having significant cost/schedule overruns or to fail altogether. One of the...
View ArticleAnother $1 billion troubled system project
A few years ago, I posted about the Air Force’s abandoned $1 billion effort to consolidate all its many accounting systems. Now it appears the State of California is going through similar difficulties:...
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Telsa alleges theft of intellectual property
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty From the article by Jordan Golson over at Verge: The complaint, filed in California Superior Court, County of Santa Clara, alleges that Anderson...
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Post-mortem of large IT failure in Scotland
I am currently teaching CS 428 (“Software Engineering”) at BYU this semester, and my students just finished their midterm a week ago. Most of the questions on the test posed a hypothetical situation...
View ArticleMore Self-Driving Car Trade Secret Fallout — Waymo v. Uber
An earlier post here deal with allegations by Telsa that a former employee had stolen trade-secret information and taken it to a new startup. This latest article has a remarkably similar story, but...
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Minnesota DMV software project: Faulty Towers/Neverending Story patterns
In my 2000 white paper, “Patterns in IT Litigation: System Failure (1976-2000)” [PDF], which I researched and wrote while at PricewaterhouseCoopers, I describe six broad fact patterns to classify the...
View ArticleNeverending Story pattern: School District ERP system late, over-budget
A story a few days ago caught my eye, not because it was unusual, but because it follows so familiar a pattern. Here are a few excerpts from the article: MANATEE — Late nights, hefty contracts and...
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