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New column for Ziff Davis: “Surviving Complexity”
As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m writing a book called Surviving Complexity. Many of my posts here at this website have adapted from materials I’m writing for that book. Well, now I’ve been hired by Ziff Davis Enterprises to write a weekly column on IT Management for the online version of Baseline. That column is […]
The Arc of Engineering
[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 […]
The engineering shortage: Japan
Today’s New York Times reports that Japan is “running out of engineers“: After years of fretting over coming shortages, the country is actually facing a dwindling number of young people entering engineering and technology-related fields. Universities call it “rikei banare,” or “flight from science.” The decline is growing so drastic that industry has begun advertising […]
Honors I never expected
[UPDATE: I received a response from Martindale-Hubbell in the comment section to this post.] I received an interesting e-mail today, with the following paragraph: Please accept our formal congratulations on the high achievement represented by this Peer Review Rating. You, Bruce Webster, are one of a select group of attorneys to have achieved this level […]
The Wetware Crisis: All Our Sins Remembered – Intro
[Copyright 2008 by Bruce F. Webster. All rights reserved. Adapted from Surviving Complexity (forthcoming).] Humanity has been developing information technology for half a century. That experience has taught us this unpleasant truth: virtually every information technology project above a certain size or complexity is significantly late and over budget or fails altogether; those that don’t […]