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Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

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Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#11
post #4

The comments made about the government about excluding IBM from making future systems for the government stood out. The reality is payroll should be executed by payroll specialists. I recently had to research payroll providers and there are players who service 20-30% of the Canadian population already. This is another sign of folks not knowing how to source, design, oversee or implement software implementations.

This is also why Ceridian is still around in spite of all of their faults (or so I hear from any small/mid-size business practitioners I know).

I take it that's who you're referring to?

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#12

The name is just too perfect: https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine... To that point, I’m wondering if all IT initiatives codenamed “Phoenix” are doomed from the start, given that the implication is “let’s burn down everything we have that works, and rise anew from the ashes”...

Hah! I make this joke all the time with friends. I have literally been on three different failed projects named ‘Phoenix’

I'm hesitant to use the phoenix framework for exactly this reason.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#14

The name is just too perfect: https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine... To that point, I’m wondering if all IT initiatives codenamed “Phoenix” are doomed from the start, given that the implication is “let’s burn down everything we have that works, and rise anew from the ashes”...

Hah! I make this joke all the time with friends. I have literally been on three different failed projects named ‘Phoenix’

Elaborate?

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#15
post #10

Would you sign to build a project who's MVP is 260,000 salary calculations with rules poorly documented and spread other hundreds of agencies? Maybe if they started with a subset and slowly built up..

This problem was likely better served by many smaller systems that better fit the specific needs.

Government is way too complex to try to cram all rules into a single monolith like Oracle's PeopleSoft.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#17
post #13

Could this be the first time someone gets fired for hiring IBM? (Sorry could not resist after having heard of that quip so many times).

Probably not. IBM will return a token amount of money so politicians save face. Someone might take the revolving door either direction.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#19
post #7

I hope to someday read a comprehensive post-mortem but I doubt there's anyone involved who can/would write one without a lot of bias against the other parties involved. This will go down in an annals of massive software project failures.

Actually, Australia went trough the same payroll procurement fiasco with IBM. You can read the report http://www.healthpayrollinquiry.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf...

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! I make this joke all the time with friends. I have literally been on three different failed projects named ‘Phoenix’

Elaborate?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology)
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