By bfwebster on Dec 28, 2009 in Complex systems, Main, Maintenance, Management, Project Failure, Risk management, Surviving Complexity, Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Roger Sessions has published a white paper, “The IT Complexity Crisis: Danger and Opportunity” (PDF). It’s created a bit of a stir in tech circles, largely because Sessions estimates that “worldwide, we are already losing over USD 500 billion per month on IT failure, and the problem is getting worse” (page 1; emphasis in original). [...]
By bfwebster on Sep 8, 2009 in Architecture, Complex systems, Main, Risk management, Software engineering | 1 Comment
In the first part of this three-part series, I briefly outlined the parallels between developing software and crafting legislation, while pointing out the great risks and issues in the latter. I also indicated what I felt were some of the general structural flaws in HR 3200, the House bill on health care reform — not [...]
By bfwebster on Sep 7, 2009 in Architecture, Complex systems, Main, Risk management, Software engineering | 6 Comments
[Welcome Slashdotters -- feel free to leave comments here or there. But no debates on health care reform or what HR 3200 does or does not do, please -- just on the concept itself.]
[Part II is now up.]
On the occasions where I have reviewed the actual text of major legislation, I have been struck by [...]
By bfwebster on May 28, 2009 in Complex systems, Main, Quality assurance | 1 Comment
A few decades back, when handheld electronic calculators were still pretty neat, someone did a study on the authority people gave to them. As I recall, those conducting the study built some normal-looking calculators that were designed with specific errors in the calculation circuits such that in certain cases the calculators would give wrong answers. [...]
By bfwebster on Jan 30, 2009 in Complex systems, Development, Main, Management, Product development | 2 Comments
I have written about the thermocline of truth, a phenomenon I have witnessed several times in large IT projects where the true status of the project (usually not good) gets blocked at a certain layer of management, slowly moving up the management chain and usually reaching the top just weeks before the scheduled release date. [...]