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The 5 books every IT manager should read right now

September 30, 2013 1 Comment
The 5 books every IT manager should read right now

In a prior post I talked about setting up a reading program for your IT department. However, whether or not you can get your IT engineers to read, you yourself need to be aware of the fundamental realities of IT project management and software engineer that have been discovered again and again. In other words, […]

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How to retain and improve your IT staff at the same time

September 23, 2013 1 Comment
How to retain and improve your IT staff at the same time

In a prior post, I talked about how to help retain your IT staff by aligning their personal goals with those of your IT department and the organization as a whole. Now I want to talk about a simple technique that will not only help you retain your best IT engineers and managers, but will […]

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Windows XP end-of-life on April 8, 2014: the debate [UPDATED]

September 20, 2013 2 Comments
Windows XP end-of-life on April 8, 2014: the debate [UPDATED]

[UPDATE AT END OF POST] As I mentioned in my previous post (“Windows Forever and Ever?“), Windows XP still has 33% of the desktop/laptop installed base, even though Microsoft has set its end-of-life (meaning no more security patches) for April 2014 — seven months from now. That 33% actually represents half a billion computers, all […]

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“Microsoft Windows Forever and Ever?” (Windows Magazine, June 1996)

September 18, 2013 8 Comments
“Microsoft Windows Forever and Ever?” (Windows Magazine, June 1996)

[Here’s another article I published back in 1996, this one predicting the problems that Microsoft would face as it continued to advance the Windows operating system.  While I didn’t anticipate in this article the rise of post-PC devices, nor the return of Steve Jobs to Apple and subsequent transformation of NeXTstep into OS X, I […]

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How to retain IT talent with goal alignment

September 16, 2013 3 Comments
How to retain IT talent with goal alignment

Back in 1990, I was hired by the principals of a start-up company (Pages Software) to build an engineering team from scratch to create a new product: a design-oriented word processor. For more than a year and a half, I acted both as head of engineering and as chief software architect — a dual role […]

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