Author Archive: bfwebster
Webster is Principal and Founder at at Bruce F. Webster & Associates, as well as an Adjunct Professor for the BYU Computer Science Department. He works with organizations to help them with troubled or failed information technology (IT) projects. He has also worked in several dozen legal cases as a consultant and as a testifying expert, both in the United States and Japan. He can be reached at 303.502.4141 or at bwebster@bfwa.com.
Teaching CS 428 (Software Engineering) at BYU
This (Winter 2017) semester, I am teaching Computer Science 428 — “Software Engineering” — for the Brigham Young University Computer Science department. I am actually taking over this class from Dr. Charles “Chuck” Knutson, who was one of my students 30 years ago when I previously taught for BYU. I’m going to do a bit […]
Lost in translation
I am working to finish up my 20th Anniversary revision of The Art of ‘Ware — though I just today found out about yet another translation that I need/want to consider — but I thought it worth posting here a portion of the introduction to the updated and revised version. Here are a few extracts […]
Overdoing the perks in IT
Rachel Feintzeig at the New York Times has an interesting piece on how the perk-rich environment of Silicon Valley is causing problems for non-SV companies: Years ago, it was just Silicon Valley firms that vied to outdo one other on perks, but as more companies go on the hunt for skilled workers to power their technology, […]
Keeping a strong IT staff despite layoffs
Two previous posts have talked about conducting triage on your IT projects and what you should do in shutting down those projects that don’t make the cut.. Now, what about your IT staff? Having been on both sides of employee layoffs, I can tell you that they are not any fun for anyone involved. This […]
Pulling the plug on IT projects
In a prior post, I talked about conducting triage on your IT projects — that is, deciding which projects should (or must) go forward, and which should (or must) be shut down. The next question is: what do you do with the projects that are to be shut down? These IT projects typically fall into […]