Some insights into the creation of WebSphere
What's the biggest technology mistake you ever made - either at work or in your own life?
When I was at IBM, I started a product called Websphere [which helps companies to operate and integrate business applications across multiple computing platforms].
Because I had come from working on big mission-critical systems, I thought it needs to be scalable, reliable, have a single point of control ... I tried to build something like a mainframe, a system that was capable of doing anything, that would be able to do what might be needed in five years.
I call it the endgame fallacy. It was too complex for people to master. I overdesigned it.
Because we were IBM, we survived it, but if we'd been a start-up, we'd have gone to the wall.
BBC News - The mantra of CA Technologies' Donald Ferguson: Simplify
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