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Patterns

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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UK Universal Credit project — complete write-off of code?

November 5, 2013 0 Comments
UK Universal Credit project — complete write-off of code?

I’ve written twice before (here and here) about the severe problems with the British government’s Universal Credit project. From my first post: The British government has spent roughly half a billion pounds ($750M) developing a new IT system for its welfare services, with the goal of cutting down on fraud and loss. The project, by all accounts, has […]

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Patterns of failure: how LucasArts fell apart

September 27, 2013 0 Comments
Patterns of failure: how LucasArts fell apart

Over at Kotaku, a Gawker Media web portal that covers computer games (a bigger industry than Hollywood, I might point out), Jason Schreier has an excellent article outlining the fall of LucasArts, once one of the most productive and successful video game companies around, but now no longer in existence. It is worth a careful […]

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Possible £200 million writeoff for Universal Credit — septic code problem?

September 13, 2013 1 Comment
Possible £200 million writeoff for Universal Credit — septic code problem?

I wrote last week about problems with the UK Government’s Universal Credit project, an attempt to do a system-wide replacement and re-engineering of IT systems for the Department for Work and Pension. The latest news article now states that the project has already written off £34 million and may end up writing off up to […]

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