Webster & Associates LLC

[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: managerial
Self delusion and group delusion are all too common in software development projects. Several factors combine to bring this about. One is the natural optimism prevalent among software engineers, particularly when they are not allowed, encouraged, or required to spend sufficient [...]

[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: managerial
The impulse to constantly add new and incremental features to a software program certainly isn’t unique to modern software develoment, or to a particular technology or methodology. It derives largely from three sources. Upper management and marketing want, and sometimes need, those [...]

Here’s an interesting story over at Physorg.com about the IT project supporting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing:
Atos Origin is the information technology partner for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with the job of designing, building and operating the invisible IT infrastructure that supplies results, events and athlete information to the media, spectators and the world.
It [...]

[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
CATEGORIES: organizational, conceptual
The software development process–creating software to solve a particular problem–is long and complex and has many activities and stages. The exact list will vary depending on what book or article you read but can generally be said to include the following:

becoming aware of [...]

Not all large IT projects fail, and even those that are deeply troubled can be turned around:
Officials at HM Courts Service (HMCS) say they have turned around a failing £447m project to provide a national case management system for magistrates courts - a scheme that is 16 years late and will cost nearly three times [...]

I’ve written a post over at my other website on why software engineers should spend time working in software quality assurance on a regular basis. ..bruce w..

From CVG comes an interesting (if brief) article on why so many commercial computer game projects are late:
PC gamers waited with bated breath, to the point of asphyxiation, for Half-Life 2, but the game took an eternity to complete. Likewise, Half-Life 2: Episode 2 teased us with expectation until its eventual release, alongside Team [...]

I don’t know how long this want ad for a “Manager of Technical Engineering” will remain (unaltered) on the net, but the following excerpt is amusingly honest (emphasis added):
Must be able to support all needs of the VP of Customer Support. This includes collaborative thinking in such areas as resource allocation, personnel actions, departmental events, [...]

A number of times over the past 13 years I have been asked to review an existing (and usually large-scale) IT project, figure out where it stands, and make recommendations as to how to get it back on track. I have found that a small number of questions will usually get me to the heart [...]

I have a long posting over at my other website discussing the challenges of hiring productive software engineers into an organization.  This is adapted from a book that I’m currently writing.