Category: ITSF White Paper

Pattern: Irrational Exuberance »

[Adapted from Patterns in IT Litigation: Systems Failure (1976-2000)]
Summary: The vendor makes claims for the functionality and/or performance benefits of the system. The client buys the system and has it installed. The client then believes that the system does not have the claimed benefits (performance, reliability and/or functionality). In some cases, the client ends [...]

Pattern: Faulty Towers »

[Adapted from Patterns in IT Litigation: Systems Failure (1976-2000)]
Summary: The client buys the system from the vendor. The client then claims that the system is defective, i.e., it has errors during operation, crashes, and so on. The vendor makes attempts to repair it, allegedly with limited and unsatisfactory success. In some cases, the client [...]

Patterns in IT Systems Failure Litigation: Introduction »

[Adapted from Patterns in IT Litigation: Systems Failure (1976-2000)]
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness…Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
– George Santayana, Life of Reason
Few professions appear to embody the quote above as the history of development projects using information technology: computer hardware, software, data, networks, and [...]

Patterns in IT systems failure lawsuits »

Several years ago, while working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, I reviewed documents and information that we had gathered regarding roughly 120 “IT systems failure” lawsuits, that is, lawsuits regarding a dispute over a two- or three-party IT systems development project. The fact pattern surrounding each case tended to fall into one or two of six major patterns:

Faulty [...]