Making IT work since 1974.
By bfwebster on Jun 7, 2010 in Complex systems, Maintenance, Quality assurance | 0 Comments
My dad, John Webster, got involved in electronics nearly 70 years ago. He enlisted in the Navy in 1941 and after surviving both Pearl Harbor and the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, he was sent stateside, where he received initial training in radio communications. During his 29 years in the Navy, he worked largely in electronics, [...]
By bfwebster on Mar 7, 2010 in Main, Maintenance, Quality assurance, Risk management | 1 Comment
I’ve actually been having this problem for some time, but I thought it might be some kind of hardware problem with the system. Now I think it’s Microsoft and/or ATI. As noted below, last fall I bought an HP Pavillion desktop (quad-core 64-bit processor, 8 GB ram, 1 TB hd) running Windows 7 (Home Premium [...]
By bfwebster on Feb 17, 2010 in Main, Maintenance, Quality assurance, Risk management | 1 Comment
My newest computer (an HP Pavillion desktop, quad-core processor, 8 GB ram, 1 TB hd) runs Windows 7, which I find to be a significant improvement over Vista. However, I ran into a problem with it a week or so ago. I was in the process of copying some files from elsewhere on my internal [...]
By bfwebster on Dec 28, 2009 in Complex systems, Main, Maintenance, Management, Project Failure, Risk management, Surviving Complexity, Uncategorized | 4 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 Mar 4, 2009 in Articles, Baseline, Development, Main, Maintenance, Management, Risk management | 0 Comments
My newest Baseline column is up, and in it, I talk about technology lifecycles that can cause you grief: Each technology is on its own product lifecycle, which may or may not match with your organization’s business and development lifecycles. In particular, there are certain cycle mismatch patterns that commonly occur in organizations looking to [...]