From the monthly archives:

February 2008

Our mention in CIO Magazine

February 29, 2008

Just a heads-up for readers: CTO/CIO Perspectives was mentioned this week in an interesting article in CIO Magazine, titled “20 Things You Can Do In 20 Minutes to Be More Successful at Work“. Not all the tips are spot-on, in my view (and I commented to that effect in the comments section), but there [...]

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Optimism, resilience, stamina: the make-up of the CTO/CIO

February 24, 2008

Here’s a disquieting little secret that few of us ever really acknowledge, maybe because it’s rather painful and also an unavoidable part of the fabric of our existence in IT. I don’t know how to say it more eloquently (or less bluntly), so here goes: being in information technology is hard. In our day-to-day dealings [...]

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Offshore development: aim for it, even if you never go there

February 19, 2008

As I wrote last time, a large part of my reason for opposing offshoring is because I’ve rarely, if ever, worked in a company where I felt the necessary prerequisites were in place to be able to even consider offshoring as a viable option. Let’s go into that in more detail now.
I’ve observed before [...]

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Offshore software development: the reasons why not

February 14, 2008

Of all the numerous cold calls I get, inquiries from potential offshoring partners lead the pack. Their main pitch, of course, is that I can lower my development (or support, or QA) costs by leveraging offshore labor at a third or less of domestic rates. This argument is of course all the more [...]

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The pitfalls of the implicit “buy” bias for IT systems and services

February 5, 2008

I wrote last time about how there are twin truths to the buy vs. build dilemma: outsourcing can be a superb way to leverage external expertise and keep your own team focused on core functions; yet, outsourcing is not an easy or friction-free choice, and it’s easy to simply substitute one set of problems with [...]

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