Category: Surviving Complexity

The Sessions paper — an analytical critique »

[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; emphasis [...]

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..

Hanging 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. Obviously, to counteract the Dead Sea effect, you want to hold onto your best IT people.
My two latest Baseline columns talk about ways [...]

Two 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 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 [...]

Pushing 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 ever-present internal politics. This week, as promised, I will talk about what it takes to champion the right solution. I can’t guarantee that [...]