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Some thoughts on “Up or Out”

April 29, 2008 8 Comments
Some thoughts on “Up or Out”

[UPDATE: Here are some more observations from Ruby-coloured glasses.] Alex Papadimoulis over at The Daily WTF (one of my favorite IT blogs) has posted a lengthy and thoughtful solution to the problems I raised in my post on the “Dead Sea effect“. Specifically, he refers to the “Up or Out” model, pioneered over a century […]

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The Wetware Crisis: the Expert Pool

April 26, 2008 5 Comments
The Wetware Crisis: the Expert Pool

[Note: I originally wrote about this concept in my first edition of The Art of ‘Ware and was going to include it in version 2.0 of that book. However, my review of the most recent translations of the oldest manuscripts of Suntzu pingfa has led me to re-interpret the maxims for that section. As a […]

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Negotiations and Lovesongs: Introduction

April 16, 2008 1 Comment
Negotiations and Lovesongs: Introduction

[Copyright 2008 by Bruce F. Webster. All rights reserved. Adapted from Surviving Complexity (forthcoming).] Two disappointed believers, Two people playing the game. Negotiations and love songs Are often mistaken for one and the same. — “Train in the Distance”, Paul Simon I used to have arguments with Carol Teasley, one of my mentors, regarding software […]

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The Longest Yard: Reorganizing IT for Success

April 14, 2008 4 Comments
The Longest Yard: Reorganizing IT for Success

[This is an article that Ruby Raley and I co-authored and that was printed in the September 2006 issue of the Cutter IT Journal. Space was limited, so we had to be rather terse throughout. Ruby and I may well expand this to significantly greater length later, but for now, here’s the original article as […]

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The Wetware Crisis: the Dead Sea effect

April 11, 2008 102 Comments
The Wetware Crisis: the Dead Sea effect

[Updated (09/12/13): Fixed or removed some broken links; updated some others.] [Updated (06/16/08): Here’s a real-world project review memo, written several years ago, that described (among many other things) the Dead Sea effect.] [Note: some of you have asked about the Cutter IT Journal article that Ruby Raley and I wrote. It’s now online here […]

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