Just ran across this article at the always-irreverent-but-usually-spot-on Register, an IT news site out of England. The standard patterns of a troubled IT project are so evident in this one report that I may well use it as a case study for my CS 428 (“Real-world software engineering”) class this fall. Here are some of the classic tropes that I teach in my class:
- multiple missed deadlines
- failure to produce a functioning system
- unreasonably limited architecture and design
- failure to design for extensibility and maintenance
- poor quality assurance
- adoption of new technology in the middle of the project
- lack of proper security implementation and design
As the saying goes, read the whole thing.
]]>Uber has escaped a court order that could have effectively halted its self-driving car program, leaving the ride-hailing giant — for now — free to continue working on the technology expected to be vital to its future.
But the world’s most valuable startup must move forward without one of its top engineers when it comes to development of a key sensor that lets autonomous cars “see” the road, a federal judge ruled in an order made public Monday. Uber also must use the “full extent” of its authority to prevent that engineer — Anthony Levandowski — and all other employees from using material allegedly stolen from rival Waymo, and force them to return the purloined documents by May 31.
The pattern is a classic one in trade secret litigation; I’ve dealt with it time and again as an expert witness, as a neutral expert, and even as a mediator.
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