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By bfwebster on Aug 29, 2008 in Admin, Articles, Baseline, Development, Main, Maintenance, Technology | 0 Comments
If it’s Friday, it must be another Baseline column. This one talks about the issues surrounding whether to build or buy software:
The other day, an IT colleague of mine mentioned a conflict at a corporation where he’s working. The corporation has a mission-critical application deployed across a large number of workstations. The set [...]
By bfwebster on Jun 3, 2008 in Books, Change management, IT Project Management, Main, Management, Methodology, PMSE, Pitfalls, Software engineering, Technology | 0 Comments
[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 [...]
By bfwebster on May 30, 2008 in Books, Main, Management, PMSE, Pitfalls, Technology | 1 Comment
[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: managerial
If your organization is adopting some new technology or methodology (the “TOM”), it is likely because of wonderful claims about how it will improve your software engineering efforts: faster development time, higher quality, lower complexity, and so on. Leaving aside the likelihood of [...]
By bfwebster on May 29, 2008 in Development, Main, Management, Methodology, PMSE, Pitfalls, Software engineering, Technology | 0 Comments
[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: managerial
Why would the use of a new technology or methodology (the “TOM”) cause managers and developers to neglect or even abandon solid software engineering practices? Because those practices are under pressure from the start. Many engineers don’t know them and aren’t willing to spend [...]
By bfwebster on May 21, 2008 in Books, Development, Main, PMSE, Pitfalls, Politics, Technology | 0 Comments
[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: political
Face it: technology adoption is a gamble, and one often made at gunpoint. External market forces lead internal political forces to demand advances — often unrealistic ones — in information technology. Those who adopt too soon come to understand the cliché “bleeding edge”. Those [...]