Tag Archives: Project Management

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The Cars That Ate Paris: The Census Website that Swore at Grannies

The 1901 Census website was meant to showcase British digitisation, but instead it became a punchline: servers that buckled on launch, mismatched kit lashed together, prisoner-typed data laced with obscenities, and retired “10 till 3 grannies” and neurodiverse consultants cleaning up the mess. I was called in to write the report that unravelled the fiasco, a job that took me from QinetiQ’s “Santa in tweed” CTO to the Cabinet Office, where I first crossed paths with Alan Mather, and learned hard lessons about hubris, engineering, and failure, along the way.

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Christian Symbolism in The Mythical Man-Month: Reflections on Faith and Software Engineering

In the world of software engineering, The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks is regarded as a seminal work, a collection of essays reflecting the complexities, challenges, and lessons learned from managing large-scale software development projects. Published in 1975, the book is best known for its contributions to project management theory and software development practices. Despite avoiding superlatives I feel it is the most important book on Computer Systems design and development and that all aspiring technologists should read it. Interestingly, beneath its technical content lies a rich layer of Christian symbolism and theological reflection that often goes unnoticed. This symbolism reflects Brooks’s deeply held Christian beliefs and provides a moral and philosophical framework for understanding the lessons of the book.

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