My latest Baseline column talks about the risks that follow a successful IT project: But sometimes with projects that really shouldn’t succeed—that are attempting too much, too fast, with too many risks—enough things go right, particularly along the critical paths, enough superhuman effort is made by those involved, so that the project does indeed go […]
My latest Baseline column is up, discussing how to make a distributed software development project work. ..bruce..
My latest Baseline column is up, talking about the challenges of a geographically-distributed software development project. Take a look. ..bruce..
[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)] Categories: managerial Let’s start by freely acknowledging that, with rare exceptions, software of any complexity changes between original specification and actual delivery. This is to be expected, and to a certain extent encouraged, when the changes represent a refinement of our understanding of the […]
[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 […]
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 […]