Bruce F. Webster

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 [...]

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). [...]

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 [...]

[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 [...]

My review of Why New Systems Fail by Phil Simon is now up on Slashdot. Here’s the opening paragraph: Over the last forty years, a small set of classic works on risks and pitfalls in software engineering and IT project management have been published and remained in print. The authors are well known, or should [...]