Category: Big Systems
Facebook Phone Fiasco
I spent most of my morning trying to change a phone number on Facebook. The original task seemed unrelated. The brief was to send new posts to Instagram from PHP by the API. My experience of APIs is they are usually easy to implement, once you have worked out how to authenticate. Today proved to…
Why Software Projects Overrun
Last week saw the launch of Squbes onto the Google Play store. Something to celebrate – but it was nearly a month overdue – and the iOS release was a week later. So what went wrong and why do software projects overrun? Underestimating complexity When estimating how long a software project will take to deliver,…
Post Office Horizon Scandal
Organisational Culture It is nothing to do with me, but I have been thinking a lot in the last few days about the Post Office Horizon scandal, and the ability of large software systems to ruin people’s lives. As I write, Paula Vennells is finishing her wholly inadequate testimony to the independent inquiry. I was…