Management
CS 428 – Winter 2019 – Webster #02 readings
In-class lecture (02/04/19) on the Webster #02 set of readings for CS 428: How to Retain IT Talent with Goal Alignment Remember Conway’s Law Controlling IT Costs: Using a Maintenance Architect Negotiations and Lovesongs Class slides are here.
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 […]
Remember Conway’s Law
Some years ago, I was called in to lead a team of three other people in reviewing a major project at a Fortune 50 corporation. This project, which I’ll call QUBE, was a major end-to-end re-engineering of that firm’s mission-critical systems, intended to replace all the existing legacy systems. The QUBE project was supposed to […]