Pillars of Purview

The flip side of common myths: how some are perpetuated by IT

As promised, I’m going to follow up on my last post (“Optimism, resilience, stamina: the make-up of the CTO/CIO“), covering the myths IT deals with on a regular basis, by talking about its flip side: the ways that IT itself can unfortunately perpetuate or contribute to some of the myths I’ve been discussing. Here’s a [...]

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

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

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

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 compelling the [...]

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

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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Cementing a formal work initiation process for IT projects

I’ve written before on how the most important thing that a CTO/CIO deals with is the proper allocation of resources. I’ve discussed how doing proper resource allocation isn’t just a matter of deciding exactly what Sam or Mary will work on this week, but actually figuring out the whole project portfolio, including sustainment activity, and [...]

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Why the CIO should air the dirty laundry

Trust. It’s important. And a company typically instills a huge amount of trust in its IT department, particularly (as is often the case today) if that IT department is responsible for the operation of systems (such as web sites) that contribute significantly to the bottom line. I’ve been at the helm of several IT departments [...]

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Software development’s classic mistakes and the role of the CTO/CIO

Here’s a post of a type I rarely do: a reaction to an item recently posted to the Internet. Specifically, a day or two ago, Steve McConnell’s firm Construx, Inc. released their update of McConnell’s list of classic software development mistakes. This survey and its results is worth everyone’s time to read (and ponder) carefully. [...]

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