Posts by PeterFV

Brexit has left a regulatory black hole for digital, say MPs

Re: So the trouble with taking back control

There never _was_ a law about banana curves. There still isn't a law about posting drivel without checking your facts ...

Gov must hire 'thousands' of techies to rescue failing projects

Re: IT degree?

"... endlessly changing requirements ..."

Wow! Amazing. That's new. Well, it was in 1946.

Since when people have managed to cope by er, writing , modelling, prototyping, imposing change windows.

Did I miss something out?

A third of UK.gov big projects will fail in next five years, warns NAO

Re: Well Da..

You missed out requirements and testing (Sigh. Again.): "Requirements written by semi-literates, never reviewed by people who know (because they're too busy fire-fighting), accepted by their bosses (who cannot read let alone think) and tested by staff who know they are messengers and will be shot if they tell the truth".

Vote now to name HPE's London boozer

The Bug and Virus

The Bug and Virus

Met signs up Atos as second outsourcing 'service integrator'

Can anyone tell us any project which ATOS has fulfilled without failure or user rancour?

Happy 2nd birthday, Windows 8 and Surface: Anatomy of a disaster

The pull-down menus are still there. In Office 2011 - for the Mac.

Microsoft's 'We want a Mac look and feel' UK director splits after seven years

He at leat acknowledged Apple's design leadership ...

... but left without ever realising why Apple is so much better. It's called usability and MS lacks the patience (and corporate ethos) to do it right.

Why Teflon Ballmer had to go: He couldn't shift crud from Windows 8, Surface

Hatchet man

Gates needed a hatchet man. Balmer was perfect.

Hatchet men don't run great corporations.

Hundreds of UK CSC staff face chop, told to train Indian replacements

Re: @Rob Fisher

If you want a liver transplant one of the best and least-expensive places in the world is Chennai.

I used to work for CSC. I ran several off-shore test teams in CSC Noida, Chennai and Hyderabad. The Noida people were (and probably remain) excellent. They were all recruited by CSC directly however several years before the NHS fiasco.

CSC Hyderabad and CSC Chennai are however the relicts of Covansys and iSoft, two of Mike Laphen's less-clever purchases. (Laphen was the CEO they "let go" last year as the sacrificial lamb following the Ontario Teachers' settlement.) With honorable exceptions, the quality of testing of these two organisations was amateur and largely responsible for the NHS disaster. Noida supported other CSC accounts. SInce then CSC has bought up a (very good) testing company and hopes to do do better.

Conclusion: CSC has a mixed off-shore test management record. It may have turned things around.