An old professor of mine writes "There are lots of pathological propensities at work ..., "Gee, we've got a way to use the computer to ..." In short, automation for the sake of automation."

See jbox.dk Quotations on Simplicity . The fundamental principle is that simplicity is really important. But how do …

Some of Cringley's The Truth About IT Consultants is good stuff. His Type "A" and Type "C" are both stories of consultants who are brought in because they have specific skills. In the "A" case, it's a technical skill, and in the "C" case it's project management.

In both cases …

Here's the analysis.

"60 cents of every IT dollar goes to maintaining existing systems". "This increased 'run the business' spending has consumed budget resources that were originally earmarked for more strategic and transformational investment," writes Gartner analyst Jed Rubin.

So, what happens with the "innovation" portion of the budget?

In …

TC's full quote was "We consume a significant portion of the overall contract generating a functional specification whose sole use is to serve as the outline for the acceptance test. Those who choose to argue this point might like to explain the recurring customer comment 'You did an excellent job …

TC Writes "With 30 years in the biz, I’ve experienced all the pains associated with a rigid linear approach (functional spec -> design doc -> code -> integrate -> acceptance test, always being sure to maintain a current version of the traceability matrix). An iterative approach is inherently more appealing, but I’m …

What I knew was this: I had a program, and I was supposed to make it work. I went to a meeting, the responsibility was duly handed off to me. "Alex has it mostly done, you just need to pitch in and help finish this by Friday."

Okay.

I listened …

We wind up in this situation from time to time.

Customer:

[X] is broken, what will it cost to fix it?

Us:

Depends, but put $$$ in your budget.

Customer:

I can't afford $$$, I can barely afford to Keep The Lights On™!

At this point, the conversation is usually over. There …

In PC World, May 1st, there's one article, "Shrink-Wrapped Software's Days Numbered " by Robert Mullins. This has quotes and numbers. Very nice, and it specifically identifies open source and SaaS as beating out shrink-wrap.

In MSDN, however, see "Building Distributed Applications: Architecture Strategies for Catching the Long Tail ". This makes …

Mr. Hayes says that "...we’re afraid that programmers simply won’t use the hot new technology and that the money we spend on it will be wasted." He plays up this fear factor, providing lots of programmer-centric reasons: "Either programmers don’t use the tools at all, or they …

Here's what I observed.

Customer: "Our business performance isn't what we want. We think some of our intranet is no good."

Us: "We'd love to look at it."

Customer: "Not so fast. You can't 'look at it'. You have to propose a measurable change in business performance, define a fixed …