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 (or anti-pattern) in IT engineering [...]
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 it, because [...]
By bfwebster on Feb 28, 2008 in Art of 'Ware, Books, Competition, Development, Main | 0 Comments
[From The Art of ‘Ware (Version 2.0) by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming), Chapter 1, “Starting Out”]
Successful product development required stealth and misdirection. Hide your strengths at first and appear to be weak; when actively developing, show no signs.
Any concept, once viewed, can be imitated, in appearance if not in fact. There is a real danger [...]
By bfwebster on Feb 26, 2008 in Art of 'Ware, Books, Competition, Management, Marketing | 0 Comments
[From The Art of ‘Ware (Version 2.0) by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming), Chapter 1, “Starting Out”]
These factors govern the success of the company: Tao; the economy; the marketplace; leadership; management.
Tao means running the company so that all the employees share the same vision of success.1
“Tao” (literally, “the Way”) is probably the most difficult concept [...]
By bfwebster on Dec 3, 2007 in Books, Competition, Development, Main, Marketing, Project Failure | 0 Comments
Over a decade ago, I wrote and published The Art of ‘Ware (M&T Books, 1995). The conceit of the book was simple: take Sun Tzu’s classic work The Art of War (Suntzu pingfa), written some 2500 years ago, and re-interpret it, maxim by maxim, for developing, deploying and marketing information technology (IT). Here’s an example:
Sun [...]