Just sharing some of my inconsequential lunch conversations with you... RSS  

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The epitome of the software industry's most expensive failed project

For most the epitome of the software industry's most expensive failed project, here are the reasons for failing according to Wikipedia:

The project demonstrated a systematic failure of software engineering practices:

  • Lack of a strong blueprint from the outset led to poor architectural decisions.
  • Repeated changes in specification.
  • Repeated turnover of management, which contributed to the specification problem.
  • Micromanagement of software developers.
  • The inclusion of many FBI Personnel who had little or no formal training in computer science as managers and even engineers on the project.
  • Scope creep as the requirements were continually added to the system even as it was falling behind schedule.
  • Code bloat due to changing specifications and scope creep. At one point it was estimated the software had over 700,000 lines of code.
  • Addition of more people and resources to the project as it was falling behind, a violation of Brooks' law.
  • Planned use of a flash cutover deployment which made it difficult to adopt the system until it was perfected.

My comment is: why do we keep repeating the same errors, when there are a bunch of new errors to try :)


PS: there's another great project management failure case-study I'll try to post here in the near future - the Federal Air Traffic system. Funny how US government tends to create these monsters?...

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