Scottish Elises

It appears our governments never seem to learn from previous mistakes and continue to award huge IT contracts to companies who could not "deliver an envelope"

The Universal Credit IT Project seems to be shaping up as a monumental disaster

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240 ... is-working

£130m going to be written off on this one thus far....................

About time the rules of procurement were changed to allow smaller and more capable talent take on this type of work from the usual suspects

IMHO the root cause of the problem is the way the Public Sector Contracts and how they manage those conracts. This is not just an IT related issue, it regularly seems to occur within other sectors e.g. Defence, Transport etc etc etc etc etc..

Makes you wonder how much it will cost Scotland, should we vote independent, to remove ourselves from the UK system (Benefits, Pension, Tax etc) and set this up for ourselves.

Doc883 wrote:Makes you wonder how much it will cost Scotland, should we vote independent, to remove ourselves from the UK system (Benefits, Pension, Tax etc) and set this up for ourselves.

you have no idea - unfortunately for us neither do the government

Whatever they say it will cost , - double it and then add a bit more

They should have asked me ... I am sure I have some old laptops lying around that would easily cope with running this class of system

Actually 40m or even 130m is just chicken feed (if you consider the size of the benefits budget).

Cheers,
Robin

Drop in the ocean compated to what my old company took off them before they went bust....

Interesting read, Nizzy.

I like the conclusion...

All success is rooted in either luck or failure. If you begin with luck, you learn nothing but arrogance. However, if you begin with failure and learn to evaluate it, you also learn to succeed. Failure begets knowledge. Out of knowledge you gain wisdom, and it is with wisdom that you can become truly successful.

I also think it's interesting that the report leads one to think of the modern "Agile" project method as a good thing. I am wary of that, but I can see the logic.

A note about bridges (well, general construction) projects and their general success: there is always the odd exception to prove the rule...Edinburgh Trams. My understanding of that was that it boiled down to client obligations not being fulfilled. And I have seen this as a big challenge in IT projects too (fixed price ones, generally). I think government IT projects suffer particularly badly from this. The client thinks "it's fixed price, we've handed all the risk to the supplier". Then lo and behold a short (or long) time later the client has a huge bill and/or write off on their hands. Who's just realised the risk, eh...

campbell wrote: My understanding of that was that it boiled down to client obligations not being fulfilled. And I have seen this as a big challenge in IT projects too (fixed price ones, generally). I think government IT projects suffer particularly badly from this. The client thinks "it's fixed price, we've handed all the risk to the supplier". Then lo and behold a short (or long) time later the client has a huge bill and/or write off on their hands. Who's just realised the risk, eh...

Something I have had first hand experience with of late ..

Peter wrote:
Something I have had first hand experience with of late ..

It's actually a large part of what tired me out (burned me out?!) with IT project management. I simply got tired of trying to manage the client to manage their obligations / dependencies...

campbell wrote:

Peter wrote:
Something I have had first hand experience with of late ..

It's actually a large part of what tired me out (burned me out?!) with IT project management. I simply got tired of trying to manage the client to manage their obligations / dependencies...

Yup, when big IT projects go badly wrong like this often the client is as much to blame as the supplier.

BTW having working in IT for 20+ years I am firmly of the opinion that IT project management completely sucks as a way to make a living . Technical consultancy is where it is at - more money and far less grief.

ryallm wrote:.

BTW having working in IT for 20+ years I am firmly of the opinion that IT project management completely sucks as a way to make a living . Technical consultancy is where it is at - more money and far less grief.

Seconded. Let's say that an immersion PM role takes a special kind of person