Interesting and Useful Links

The following links contain studies, data, opinion and other useful information related to the failure of projects.  I will add to the list over time, so please check back occasionally.


Cautionary tales of some of the world’s most significant computer bugs (Wikipedia links)

  1. List of world’s most significant computer bugs
  2. The story of how a software bug nearly caused World War III
  3. The Ariane 5 story – the world’s most costly software bug
  4. The Therac-25 disaster
  5. The Pentium floating point divide debacle

Other significant stories

  1. The Babbage difference machine (a very early technology project that encountered schedule and budget troubles)
  2. The Iridium satellite phone venture (failure of an innovative business – and its subsequent comeback)
  3. Possible role of technology in the 2008 economic crisis

Methodologies often used in technology projects (Wikipedia and other links of interest)

  1. List of development methodologies and philosophies
  2. Agile development
  3. Extreme Programming (XP)
  4. OpenUp – a development methodology based on the Eclipse framework (well worth reading)
  5. OpenUp Basic – a light version of OpenUp
  6. Rapid Application Development (RAD)
  7. Rational Unified Process (RUP) – Now an IBM methodology
  8. Scrum
  9. Spiral model of software development
  10. Test driven development
  11. Waterfall model