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Project failure

Neverending Story pattern: School District ERP system late, over-budget

November 14, 2018
Neverending Story pattern: School District ERP system late, over-budget

A story a few days ago caught my eye, not because it was unusual, but because it follows so familiar a pattern. Here are a few excerpts from the article: MANATEE — Late nights, hefty contracts and humming computers are a norm in the district’s School Support Center, where employees are working to fix a […]

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Minnesota DMV software project: Faulty Towers/Neverending Story patterns

March 29, 2018
Minnesota DMV software project: Faulty Towers/Neverending Story patterns

In my 2000 white paper, “Patterns in IT Litigation: System Failure (1976-2000)” [PDF], which I researched and wrote while at PricewaterhouseCoopers, I describe six broad fact patterns to classify the types of software system implementation failure. One of those patterns I named “Faulty Towers”: The client buys the system from [or has the system developed […]

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IT Snapshot: Chapter 1 of “The Mythical Man-Month”

October 17, 2017
IT Snapshot: Chapter 1 of “The Mythical Man-Month”

Over forty years of working in information technology (IT) have taught me how few people have ever actually read some of the most important books in software engineering and IT project management. I teach a senior-level class in Software Engineering (CS 428) at Brigham Young University, and my students have to read a few of […]

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Post-mortem of large IT failure in Scotland

March 21, 2017
Post-mortem of large IT failure in Scotland

I am currently teaching CS 428 (“Software Engineering”) at BYU this semester, and my students just finished their midterm a week ago. Most of the questions on the test posed a hypothetical situation on an IT project or at work and asked them to identify risks and/or solutions, with citations from the books and articles […]

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Another $1 billion troubled system project

January 11, 2017
Another $1 billion troubled system project

A few years ago, I posted about the Air Force’s abandoned $1 billion effort to consolidate all its many accounting systems. Now it appears the State of California is going through similar difficulties: State officials have failed to remedy problems that have contributed to a two-year delay for a new computer system and cost increases […]

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