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Robert N. Charette retires as IEEE Spectrum contributing editor

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Robert N. Charette retires as IEEE Spectrum contributing editor

IEEE Spectrum's website editor marks the retirement of Robert N. Charette, an IEEE Life Senior Member and self-described risk ecologist, as a contributing editor after a collaboration that began in 2005. The editor first invited Charette, already a prolific author on risk management and software engineering, to write for a special report on why enterprise software projects fail; the resulting article, "Why Software Fails," is still taught in university engineering classes. When the editor became Spectrum's website editor in 2007, Charette became the first contributor asked to write a regular blog, The Risk Factor, which ran for more than 10 years and 1,750 posts chronicling software debacles. The series culminated in "Lessons From a Decade of IT Failures," which won a 2016 Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Infographics; the editor notes the infographics themselves were built in software that is no longer supported, so the files are now lost.

Alongside The Risk Factor, and while running two management consultancies and raising his daughters Maura and Megan (a future biochemist and a future civil engineer, respectively), Charette wrote other deeply reported pieces: "The Doctor Will See Your Electronic Health Record Now," the 12-part series and e-book The EV Transition Explained, and "Automated to Death," about the deadly consequences of automation in the cyberphysical systems that pilot planes, trains and cars.

Charette told the editor his goal throughout was to make software visible: "Software is all around us, but we don't recognize it at all. I really wanted my stories to help people better understand complex software systems. You can't see software, you can't touch it, you can't taste it. You may feel the consequences of software failure, but you never see the reason itself."

Asked which article had the biggest impact, Charette named his 2013 feature "The STEM Crisis Is a Myth," saying Spectrum gave him a platform to challenge the assumption that more STEM graduates were needed, a claim he says employers and academia had turned into a myth accepted by the IEEE community.

Charette is retiring as a contributing editor to focus on nature photography and to write a handful of fictional trilogies, including one titled "The STEM Murders," featuring an engineer-turned-detective and his rabbi. He closed the interview with what he called his main risk maxim: "Assumptions made are risks accepted."

Key facts

  • Robert N. Charette is retiring as an IEEE Spectrum contributing editor after a collaboration with the site's editor that began in 2005.
  • His blog The Risk Factor ran for more than 10 years and 1,750 posts, and its capstone infographic feature won a 2016 Jesse H. Neal Award; the original infographic files are now unreadable because the software that made them is no longer supported.
  • His other notable work includes "Why Software Fails," "The Doctor Will See Your Electronic Health Record Now," the 12-part "The EV Transition Explained," and "Automated to Death."
  • Charette named his 2013 article "The STEM Crisis Is a Myth" as the piece with the biggest impact, for challenging the assumption that more STEM graduates were needed.
  • He is retiring to focus on nature photography and to write fiction, including a trilogy titled "The STEM Murders."

Why it matters

The piece is a first-person send-off for one of Spectrum's longest-running contributors rather than a news event, but it doubles as a capsule history of a specific beat: making the invisible failures of software visible to a general engineering audience. Charette's framing, that people feel software's failures without ever seeing their cause, is the throughline of two decades of his writing, from "Why Software Fails" to The Risk Factor to "Automated to Death."

Who it affects

Readers and past students of Charette's work, including the engineering classes that still assign "Why Software Fails"; the IEEE Spectrum audience who followed The Risk Factor; and readers of his multi-part series on electric vehicles and automation risk. It also marks a change for Spectrum itself, which loses a contributor the editor describes as one of its most prolific.

How to use it

The tribute functions as a reading guide to Charette's archive: it points to "The STEM Crisis Is a Myth" (2013), "Why Software Fails," and "Trillions Spent and Big Software Projects Are Still Failing" as linked pieces, alongside The Risk Factor blog, "The Doctor Will See Your Electronic Health Record Now," The EV Transition Explained e-book, and "Automated to Death," for readers who want to follow up on any of the specific topics.

How solid is it

This is a primary-source account: written by the Spectrum editor who worked directly with Charette since 2005, built on direct quotes gathered in a Friday conversation with him, and published on IEEE Spectrum's own site. The facts about dates, the blog's run and the award are the editor's own recollection of an internal, decades-long working relationship rather than independently verified figures.

Risks and caveats

As a personal tribute, the piece is inherently celebratory and does not attempt a critical assessment of Charette's body of work. The editor writing the tribute is not named in the text. Details on what Charette's two management consultancies do, and any plot specifics of "The STEM Murders" beyond its title and premise, are not given.

“My main risk maxim is assumptions made are risks accepted.”

— Robert N. Charette