[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 […]
[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: […]
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 […]
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..
Classic patterns in disputed IT project: Hertz v. Accenture
Just ran across this article at the always-irreverent-but-usually-spot-on Register, an IT news site out of England. The standard patterns of a troubled IT project are so evident in this one report that I may well use it as a case study for my CS 428 (“Real-world software engineering”) class this fall. Here are some of […]
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 […]
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 […]
![The Meltdown/Spectre CPU bugs: a dramatic global case of the “Unintended Consequences” pattern [UPDATED 4/4/18]](http://bfwa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/intel-cpu-150x150.jpg "The Meltdown/Spectre CPU bugs: a dramatic global case of the “Unintended Consequences” pattern [UPDATED 4/4/18]")
Back in 2000, PricewaterhouseCooper published my research white paper, “Patterns in IT Litigation: Systems Failure (1976-2000)” (PDF). This paper reflected research I and my staff had done over several months on roughly 120 two- or three-party lawsuits involving information technology. I found that almost all of these lawsuits fell into one or two of six […]