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 Jun 2, 2010 in Business, Competition, Main | 1 Comment
When the iPad was announced, a major aspect of that announcement was the $30/month unlimited data plan from AT&T for the iPad. Now, only two months after the iPad actually started shipping, AT&T is ending that plan as of June 7th, and I find it very hard to believe that Apple didn’t know this would [...]
By bfwebster on Dec 29, 2008 in Competition, Complex systems, Development, Main, Surviving Complexity | 1 Comment
Over at Futurismic (one of my daily science blog reads) is this post about the ULTra light transit system. The system is quite clever and takes a demand-based (vs. a schedule-based) approach to transit. But as you watch the accompanying video, ask yourself: why will the ULTra system likely never grow beyond small, custom installations [...]
By bfwebster on May 21, 2008 in Business, Competition, Main, Product development, Quality assurance, Software engineering, Surviving Complexity | 1 Comment
[Copyright 2008 by Bruce F. Webster. All rights reserved. Adapted from Surviving Complexity (forthcoming).] And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot; And thereby hangs a tale. – William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene vii. I have observed a pattern [...]
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 [...]