By bfwebster on Feb 27, 2011 in Main, Surviving Complexity, Technology | 0 Comments
Freeman Dyson and James Gleick are both authors always worth reading. In this case, Dyson has reviewed Gleick’s newest book in an essay titled “How We Know”. An excerpt: According to Gleick, the impact of information on human affairs came in three installments: first the history, the thousands of years during which people created and [...]
By bfwebster on Dec 28, 2009 in IT project disputes, IT Project Management, Main, Management, Pitfalls, Risk management, Surviving Complexity | 1 Comment
[cross-posted from brucefwebster.com] Roger Sessions has published a white paper, “The IT Complexity Crisis: Danger and Opportunity” (PDF). It’s created a bit of a stir in tech circles, largely because Sessions estimates that “worldwide, we are already losing over USD 500 billion per month on IT failure, and the problem is getting worse” (page 1; [...]
By bfwebster on Nov 20, 2008 in Articles, Baseline, IT Project Management, Main, Software engineering, Surviving Complexity | 0 Comments
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..
By bfwebster on Nov 3, 2008 in Articles, Baseline, IT Project Management, Main, Management, Surviving Complexity, Training | 0 Comments
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. Obviously, to counteract the Dead Sea effect, you want to hold onto your best IT people. My two latest Baseline columns talk about [...]
By bfwebster on Sep 24, 2008 in Articles, Baseline, Development, IT Project Management, Main, Management, Quality assurance, Software engineering, Surviving Complexity | 0 Comments
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 dollars on major IT project and yet still nickle-and-dime their software quality assurance (SQA) effort. It doesn’t help that SQA personnel are pretty much [...]