software project failures

software development concepts

The Big Ball of Mud and Other Architectural Disasters

Mistakes are inevitable on any software project. But mistakes, if handled appropriately, are OK. Mistakes can be intercepted, adjusted, and ultimately addressed. The root of deep, fatal software project problems is not knowing when you're making a mistake. These types of mistakes tend to fester into massive, systemic

By Jeff Atwood ·
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software development practices

Managing with Trust

Marco Dorantes recently linked to a great article by Watts Humphrey, who worked on IBM’s OS/360 project: Why Big Software Projects Fail. Watts opens with an analysis of software project completion data from 2001: Figure 2 shows another cut of the Standish data by project size. When looked

By Jeff Atwood ·
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