By bfwebster on Oct 5, 2011 in Art of 'Ware, Books, Business, Competition, Main, Marketing, Product development, Professionalism | 0 Comments
The second personal computer I ever owned[1] was an Apple II, with no floppy drive. I bought it, along with a small color TV, from my close friend Robert Trammel while we were both living in Houston sometime around 1980.We had already spent hours together programming on it, then carefully (though not always successfully) saving [...]
By bfwebster on Jul 9, 2010 in Art of 'Ware, Competition, Development, Main, Management, Marketing, Product development, Project Failure | 0 Comments
The KIN debacle (product canceled after five weeks; reports of actual phones sold range from 8,000 all the way down to 500), followed by Microsoft’s announcement of layoffs, has triggered on-line discussion among Microsoft employees, past and present. Even recognizing the self-selecting and inevitably self-serving nature of those comments, they still reflect serious, serious problems [...]
By bfwebster on Jan 26, 2010 in Art of 'Ware, Development, Main, Management, Software engineering | 1 Comment
My co-author and good friend Ruby Raley pointed me to this posting by Chris Curran over a possible new IT role, that of the “IT Czar”. Chris specifically uses a rebuilding-the-football-team analogy: What is interesting about Holmgren’s hire is that it is modeled after Bill Parcells role at Miami – The Football Czar. He’s not [...]
By bfwebster on Apr 4, 2008 in Art of 'Ware, Books, Competition, Main, Management | 0 Comments
[From The Art of ‘Ware (Version 2.0) by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming), Chapter 2, “Supporting Development”] When funds are exhausted, then money is raised under pressure. Control is lost and equity surrendered to supply the needed resources. One of life’s great ironies is that the worst time to raise money is when you really need [...]
By bfwebster on Apr 3, 2008 in Art of 'Ware, Books, Financing, Hiring | 4 Comments
[Welcome to all the folks coming in from Reddit! You can download for free a complete (and earlier) draft copy of The Art of 'Ware (Version 2.0) [PDF] if you’re interested. Also, comments and criticisms are actively solicited for this and the other maxim-by-maxim postings.] ============================================= [From The Art of ‘Ware (Version 2.0) by Bruce [...]