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IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

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Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#41

Post by ksk »

kfk wrote: post #11

The mess is probably on both sides. The issue is that management doesn't care about IT until everything breaks apart. This means IT is seen as cost and not worth the trouble to do well and keep in house. Then of course everything starts falling apart and it's easier to put the fault on the vendors. Of course IBM has its faults, but I'd guess they are more on the overselling side (we can do everything and cheaper and…

>The issue is that management doesn't care about IT until everything breaks apart. This means IT is seen as cost and not worth the trouble to do well and keep in house.

It won't make any difference if they had an inhouse team.

In order to choose a competent vendor, or to hire a competent employee the management itself needs to be sufficiently tech savvy to differentiate between mediocre and good candidates.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#42

Post by petra »

myth_drannon wrote: post #25

Another "failed" project for Canadian government, this time by Adobe. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-to-downsi... Since the projects were done by consultancies you can't call it a failure from the consultancy point of view. They managed to milk the government for multiples of the estimated budged and this is a great success for them. That's just how it works - underbid, lock in and then massage th…

Is there a better way for governments to manage such processes ?

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#43

Post by signal11 »

teh_klev wrote: post #16
lph wrote: post #8

Mind boggling. What could possibly be so complicated about a payroll system? Does anyone here have insight into this problem space?

Not completely definitive: http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsPayrollHard And that's just scratching the surface of the types of problems encountered. Statutory compliance makes payroll software complex. There can be many hundreds of rules defined by government and law (and combinations of these rules) that can affect how much money ends up in your pay packet. In addition to this the payroll software and the data held within n…

Some day laws will be written as s-expressions to solve just this problem. (hat tip: Charlie Stross, _Accelerando_)

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#44

Post by haecceity »

bhouston wrote: post #39

Like all IBM projects now day the bulk of the work was done in India for likely less than $5 CAD/hr, while they billed out $100 CAD/hr or even more. The actual numbers may be slightly different, but still these are close to reality. What a great profit margin for a failed project. I wouldn't be surprised the code is like a lot I've seen from Indian-based sweat shops (btw there are amazing Indian coders, but you gener…

Even $100 CAD/hr sounds way too low.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#45

Post by kfk »

sidlls wrote: post #17
kfk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every business process that has run for decades is complicated. Think how much bugs have been "fixed" and how many custom little things have been built. Managing users, expectations, deliverable of such things is very complicated.

You're right about the accretion of ad-hoc fixes over time. Some of these might be unnecessary when analysed with hindsight and need not be faithfully reproduced in a new component or system.

Sure, but go tell that to 300 angry users that used that particular useless feature for 20 years

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#46

Post by vkou »

haecceity wrote: post #44
bhouston wrote: post #39

Like all IBM projects now day the bulk of the work was done in India for likely less than $5 CAD/hr, while they billed out $100 CAD/hr or even more. The actual numbers may be slightly different, but still these are close to reality. What a great profit margin for a failed project. I wouldn't be surprised the code is like a lot I've seen from Indian-based sweat shops (btw there are amazing Indian coders, but you gener…

Even $100 CAD/hr sounds way too low.

So does $5 CAD/hr. Salaries in India have grown a fair bit since the early oughts.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#47

Post by dastbe »

petra wrote: post #42
myth_drannon wrote: post #25

Another "failed" project for Canadian government, this time by Adobe. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-to-downsi... Since the projects were done by consultancies you can't call it a failure from the consultancy point of view. They managed to milk the government for multiples of the estimated budged and this is a great success for them. That's just how it works - underbid, lock in and then massage th…

Is there a better way for governments to manage such processes ?

One of the major problems (at least in the US) is that the process is heavyweight and specifically tuned towards "lowest conforming bid". You end up getting subpar work and long delays, but the government is absolutely unwilling to restart the process in almost all cases because the cost is just that large (and we picked this one because it was going to be the lowest cost!). In some ways, the government has very little control over the outcome.

We've seen through things like 18f and usds that the government can adequately and effectively manage software projects itself and produce amazing results. Giving the US government more agency to self-fund ongoing development and procure solutions that are technically superior as opposed to "lowest conforming bid" is what is really needed IMO.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#48

Post by pcurve »

myth_drannon wrote: post #25

Another "failed" project for Canadian government, this time by Adobe. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-to-downsi... Since the projects were done by consultancies you can't call it a failure from the consultancy point of view. They managed to milk the government for multiples of the estimated budged and this is a great success for them. That's just how it works - underbid, lock in and then massage th…

" A $1.54-million contract for a new content management system, where all government websites would be moved, was awarded to Adobe in 2015."

If government officials thought that a project of that scale can be done for $1.54 million by a company size of Adobe, then clearly they were negligent in their duty.

It can be done by much smaller group of talented developers in couple years, but I'd imagine it would still cost at least double what Adobe quoted.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#49

Post by stevenwoo »

gonzo41 wrote: post #18
Retric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government creates a Request for Proposal (RFP) listing what the government wants. Companies have some listed period that could be as short as 7 days or as long as 6 months to respond with a Proposal of work including costs. Government then reviews and picks one based on the stated criteria. This might seem like a reasonable solution, but it adds significant overhead.

So adding onto this, if you do a quick google for an exmaple of a government RFP. OMFG! no agile in sight. You'll be greeted with about a thousand pages of spec. This is where the big shops earn their money. They know how to grind through the paperwork.

This example was from 30 years ago, but I worked on a cross platform version control system for a contractor to NASA and the documentation was enough to fill an Ikea sized bookcase of binders filled with the printed TDD on double sided paper. Of course git was created ten years later.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#50

Post by jasonmaydie »

The same Canadian goverment that decided to transfer all their IT systems to one vendor Shared Services Canada which turned out to be another failed system that almost every department including statistics canada blame for delays and failures.
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