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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

#41

Post by microcolonel »

zaroth wrote: post #23

Not having ever worked on anything like this, the death knell for these projects must be the inability to ever reduce functionality into a reasonable core set. Basically the 80/20 rule but where there are practically an infinite number of edge cases that stretch the project on indefinitely? You could serve 80% of the payroll burden with software that cost $10m. 90% coverage costs $100m. 98% costs $1,000m. And 100% co…

Also there's a good chance that the decision to go with IBM as a vendor, and the conduct thereafter, was corrupt from the start. That would go a long way toward explaining why so little due diligence was observed in assessing whether or not to continue the project with them at any of the stages it could've been.

Yes, people do make huge blunders in powering forward with overpowered, unnecessary solutions to problems they largely do not have; but blunders this big usually don't take this long to suss out.

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

#43

Post by threeseed »

bloomingfractal wrote: post #5

and that's why governments should hire software engineers that can be in the loop and understand not only the technical but the policy side. Hiring an army of contractors earning 300k/year to deliver "something" in the waterfall model is a recipe for disaster.

Have you actually tried what you are saying ? Because it's a nice idea just completely unrealistic.

Software engineers who are not just technical but SMEs as well as having excellent skills in stakeholder engagement are incredibly rare. And most of them know how good they are and are contracting at, you guessed it, around 300k/year. Talented engineers are usually quite savvy when it comes to money.

Also for most projects like this it is Waterfall for the overall project (Requirements, Design, Development, UAT, Production) and Agile for the Design/Development parts. It's really the only way since the client does Requirements/UAT/Production and the vendor does Design/Development.

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

#44

Post by [deleted] »

vidanay wrote: post #22

So, what makes a payroll system at this scale so difficult? On the face of it, there are salary employees and there are hourly employees. How many taxing bodies does Canada have? Federal, provincial, and municipal? Is that a few dozen or a few hundred? Is Canadian tax code crazy complicated that doesn't allow for a rules based system? I'm honestly curious as to how a "simple" payroll system can go so far off the rail…

[deleted]

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

#45

Post by trhway »

zaroth wrote: post #23

Not having ever worked on anything like this, the death knell for these projects must be the inability to ever reduce functionality into a reasonable core set. Basically the 80/20 rule but where there are practically an infinite number of edge cases that stretch the project on indefinitely? You could serve 80% of the payroll burden with software that cost $10m. 90% coverage costs $100m. 98% costs $1,000m. And 100% co…

>You could serve 80% of the payroll burden with software that cost $10m. 90% coverage costs $100m. 98% costs $1,000m. And 100% costs $∞

this is where crucial distinction and choice comes - enterprise software which supposedly have enough flexibility and configurability to cover all the cases or the software which allows and requires a bunch of custom code. The former is a monster and the latter requires good tech chops. And choosing the software with the right balance between what can be configured and what would have to be developed requires deep tech wisdom and experience on the part of the leadership which is usually a very tall order...

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

#46

Post by dsfyu404ed »

debacle wrote: post #40
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle/PeopleSoft can do payroll for a defense contractor with tens of thousands of employees across multiple nations. I think proper configuration is what's lacking in this case.

Oracle costs a lot. It infects your entire stack, from hardware all the way up to personnel, and drastically inflates the cost from end to end. With no real utility advantage, either.

That's not relevant to whether or not the software is capable of performing the task.

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

#47

Post by threeseed »

debacle wrote: post #40
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle/PeopleSoft can do payroll for a defense contractor with tens of thousands of employees across multiple nations. I think proper configuration is what's lacking in this case.

Oracle costs a lot. It infects your entire stack, from hardware all the way up to personnel, and drastically inflates the cost from end to end. With no real utility advantage, either.

Everything infects your entire stack. If I hire Java, Ruby, PHP etc people then everything from hardware up to personnel is going to be selected to optimise the delivery and execution of software. Kind of common sense that you would do this.

I don't disagree that Oracle costs a lot and that they inflate margins pretty poorly but to say they have no real utility advantage is a bit ridiculous. Most of the world's enterprises are running core business systems off Oracle and if they move to the cloud it's usually to Oracle instances in the cloud not any other system.

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

#48

Post by vidanay »

mkohler wrote: post #36
vidanay wrote: post #22

So, what makes a payroll system at this scale so difficult? On the face of it, there are salary employees and there are hourly employees. How many taxing bodies does Canada have? Federal, provincial, and municipal? Is that a few dozen or a few hundred? Is Canadian tax code crazy complicated that doesn't allow for a rules based system? I'm honestly curious as to how a "simple" payroll system can go so far off the rail…

http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsPayrollHard

That's.....amazing

It almost gives the impression that an air traffic control system is actually easier (although also failed.)

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

#49

Post by jorblumesea »

The whole big 4 IT consulting industry needs to die a swift death. It's basically institutionalized corruption. Overbill the client, under deliver with shoddy products made overseas, get that vendor lock in and watch the money flow in. The cost savings are largely an illusion sold by false promises of a better world.

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

#50

Post by ItsJason »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #3

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”...

Not just all IT initiatives - I just heard today that the project that would eventually create the Ford Pinto was also named Phoenix. (from Stuff You Should Know podcast)
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