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Neverending Story pattern: School District ERP system late, over-budget

November 14, 2018
Neverending 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 humming computers are a norm in the district’s School Support Center, where employees are working to fix a […]

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Minnesota DMV software project: Faulty Towers/Neverending Story patterns

March 29, 2018
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 types of software system implementation failure. One of those patterns I named “Faulty Towers”: The client buys the system from [or has the system developed […]

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More Self-Driving Car Trade Secret Fallout — Waymo v. Uber

May 16, 2017
More 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 involving an individual leaving Waymo and joining Uber: Uber has escaped a court order that could have effectively halted its self-driving car program, […]

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Post-mortem of large IT failure in Scotland

March 21, 2017
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 on an IT project or at work and asked them to identify risks and/or solutions, with citations from the books and articles […]

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Telsa alleges theft of intellectual property

January 26, 2017
Telsa alleges theft of intellectual property

From the article by Jordan Golson over at Verge: The complaint, filed in California Superior Court, County of Santa Clara, alleges that Anderson attempted to recruit at least 12 Tesla engineers to a new self-driving venture that he and Urmson were starting, in violation of Anderson’s non-solicitation agreement, and that Anderson took confidential Tesla information […]

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