Live data from Hacker News

The BBC's hi-tech failure: Don't Mention It

economist.com

11–20 of 92 posts

Re: The BBC's hi-tech failure: Don't Mention It

#11
post #7

In the US I think noone even blinks an eye at $150 million anymore

It's funny you mention that. My first thought was, "wow, that's a lot of money." But then I thought, "but how much is it really?" I actually have no idea how much it should cost for them to do what they were trying to do though I suspect it is probably a fraction of that $150MM.

Re: The BBC's hi-tech failure: Don't Mention It

#14
post #4

Real headline: Publicly funded broadcaster makes same mistake most large private enterprises make in more or less the same way. It seems to me that months or years of auditing and hearings and cries for heads to roll are probably wasted. Just like a private company a few mangers should probably get tossed or reassigned and the second version of the same project should get started to address the businesses needs the f…

>Publicly funded broadcaster makes same mistake most large private enterprises make in more or less the same way.

Actually large private enterprises don't usually make this kind of mistake. This is a typical big government project. Software development is hard. Building large, complex, poorly defined software systems is hard.

//EDIT

I should clarify that. I don't think a private enterprise would engage in a project that would have it build an internal system, at that scale ($100 million), having so little impact on it's primary revenue driver, over so many years!

Big enterprises fail with big software, that's a fact. But they wouldn't fail in this specific way. This is a quintessential big government software project failure.

Re: The BBC's hi-tech failure: Don't Mention It

#18
post #4

Real headline: Publicly funded broadcaster makes same mistake most large private enterprises make in more or less the same way. It seems to me that months or years of auditing and hearings and cries for heads to roll are probably wasted. Just like a private company a few mangers should probably get tossed or reassigned and the second version of the same project should get started to address the businesses needs the f…

>Publicly funded broadcaster makes same mistake most large private enterprises make in more or less the same way. Actually large private enterprises don't usually make this kind of mistake. This is a typical big government project. Software development is hard. Building large, complex, poorly defined software systems is hard. //EDIT I should clarify that. I don't think a private enterprise would engage in a project t…

There are a lot of numbers tossed around without a lot of hard data backing them up, but it's generally accepted that over half of all large software projects 'fail' at both private companies and government institutions.

Re: The BBC's hi-tech failure: Don't Mention It

#20
post #4

Real headline: Publicly funded broadcaster makes same mistake most large private enterprises make in more or less the same way. It seems to me that months or years of auditing and hearings and cries for heads to roll are probably wasted. Just like a private company a few mangers should probably get tossed or reassigned and the second version of the same project should get started to address the businesses needs the f…

>Publicly funded broadcaster makes same mistake most large private enterprises make in more or less the same way. Actually large private enterprises don't usually make this kind of mistake. This is a typical big government project. Software development is hard. Building large, complex, poorly defined software systems is hard. //EDIT I should clarify that. I don't think a private enterprise would engage in a project t…

"Actually large private enterprises don't usually make this kind of mistake."

Really? You sure about that? Because hard numbers are hard to come by, but I'm pretty sure they do with some frequency. It's notoriously common for large consultancies not working for the government to have the same outcome too.

It's possible private enterprise makes this mistake at a different rate than the government, but I'd despair of trying to prove that claim, or even give it a solid definition. In general large software initiatives seem to fail, regardless of whose bright idea they are.

Post reply on HN