Webster is Principal and Founder at at Bruce F. Webster & Associates, as well as an Adjunct Professor for the BYU Computer Science Department. He works with organizations to help them with troubled or failed information technology (IT) projects. He has also worked in several dozen legal cases as a consultant and as a testifying expert, both in the United States and Japan. He can be reached at 303.502.4141 or at bwebster@bfwa.com.
[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)] CATEGORIES: organizational, conceptual, political Management is always looking for the proverbial silver bullet, despite Fred Brooks’ warning to the contrary. Good reasons may exist to adopt a particular technology — such as object-oriented development — and/or a particular methodology — such as RUP, Agile, […]
Back in the mid-1990s, I wrote and published Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development (M&T Books, 1995). The book captured lessons learned from five years of full-time commercial software development using object-oriented technology, as well as cautions and observations gleaned from books and articles on the subject. Shortly after the book went into publication, I started plans […]
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 […]
…this IT project out of Sydney appears to fit the bill: Ten years after it was first announced and almost $100 million later, Sydney is no closer to a cashless public transport ticketing system after the NSW Government was forced to terminate its contract for the troubled Tcard. Transport Minister John Watkins announced the contract […]
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 […]