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

economist.com

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

#81

Post by pessimizer »

macspoofing wrote: post #14
JamisonM wrote: 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…

A productive use of this trollpost is to list failures of giant software initiatives by private companies. You could fill up a thread w/just SAP.

Levi-Strauss, SAP, and $100M: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/levi-strauss-sap-r...

"Levi’s is bucking the industry-wide trend by going ahead with ERP now. 'It’s expensive, high risk and requires a lot of cultural change, and unless you have a really compelling reason to do them you don’t [during a downturn],' says Paula Rosenblum, an AMR Research analyst."

Waste Management, SAP, and $100M: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/promises-promises-a-look-at-wa...

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

#82

Post by pessimizer »

MrDOS wrote: post #51
astrodust wrote: post #17

The same organization that couldn't be arsed to host some of their historical web properties due to "high costs": http://853blog.com/2011/01/25/pulling-the-plug-on-the-bbcs-i...

It strikes me that the BBC is hilariously bad at archival. They scrapped dozens of Doctor Who episodes in the name of saving space ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes ).

That was common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuMont_Television_Network#DuMo...

"By the early 1970s, their vast library of 35mm and 16mm kinescopes eventually wound up in the hands of ABC, who reportedly disposed of all of them in New York's East River to make room for more recent-vintage videotapes in a warehouse."

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

#83

Post by JPKab »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #61
JPKab wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ERPs are a great example. but I don't necessarily agree with your view that a large enterprise's existing workflow is superior. My take: Most large enterprises have workflows which could be vastly improved by automation of ANY kind, even one that is imposed by a minimally customized ERP. ERP implementations are most successful, on both an ROI front as well as success in implementation, when they are brought in and th…

Good points, and my thoughts exactly when I left university with a business degree. My take now: The workflows of large enterprises are not really well understood at all. With lean management and how management careers work, even the lowest management levels has only a vague idea what is actually happening in their departments. Designing even a tiny system for a small number of users requires a lot of time and a lot…

I'm not sure if you are assuming that I'm a naive guy who is fresh out of university or not. In case you are, I am not. I worked for a small company (I was the 6th employee, and it grew to 150 people) whose largest project was an ERP implementation for an extremely large enterprise which I shall not name, but you would immediately know them. I was not involved on the project directly, but was frequently pulled in to advise those who were. Said organization went down a rabbit-hole trying to map out all of their workflows so that we could customize the ERP for their needs. What a nightmare. I am now witnessing a successful ERP implementation in another large organization. The first priority is to minimize customization.

General Electric is a model of how to implement an ERP. They followed the minimal customization model, and forced their workers to change their workflows to take advantage of the tool. The key is to identify all of the data an org needs, and make it accessible. If your developers don't have an excellent metadata analysis/storage tool (homemade or bought) they are screwed.

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

#84

Post by takluyver »

leejoramo wrote: post #77
_yosefk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something special about private enterprises making them reconsider their approaches, though - the fact that they lose their own money (which is often combined with having a smaller pool of money to begin with). Few enterprises can spend $150M and fewer will keep spending upon signs of things not working out. As to private contractors doing a poor job when paid with taxpayer money - makes some sense, as long a…

I know of a private newspaper with a circulation of around 30,000 that spent $3M on a failed Print software system. How does that compare to the BBC's viewer & listenership numbers for $150M for a Audio/Video production system?

According to barb.co.uk, BBC 1 (the flagship TV channel) had some 45M viewers over a recent week. We could consider other channels, radio stations and the website, but that's already well over half the UK population. By cost per customer, that's more than an order of magnitude better than your newspaper example.

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

#85

Post by thisone »

tehwalrus wrote: post #30

Nowhere near as much as the £12Bn the NHS spent on an impossible moving-spec IT system that they also scrapped(1). Oh wait, it's a tenth of the amount. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health

Saying the program was scrapped is a bit off. It makes it sound like nothing has come out of the project at all.

Choose and Book is widely in use, the Spine exists, as well as the N3 network.

Data format and transfer standards are coming into play now. So instead of one system to rule them all, it's working towards interop. Which probably should have been the overall goal to begin with.

People like to think of the NHS as a monolith, but it's really hundreds of tiny fiefdoms.

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

#86

Post by thisone »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #39
realtalker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no one working for the BBC in the UK would make that sort of money as a developer

I don't know about that. I've seen a few tech jobs around the £70-80k mark at the BBC, which is about $120k. Throw in the additional benefits and it's probably not far off.

a few, and they'll be in London so your living costs can be truly massive.

Sometimes the rates you see advertised are also 3 month contract jobs where someone is looking for attention by stating the contract amount as if the job was 12 months salaried.

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

#87

Post by tehwalrus »

tubs wrote: post #33
tehwalrus wrote: post #30

Nowhere near as much as the £12Bn the NHS spent on an impossible moving-spec IT system that they also scrapped(1). Oh wait, it's a tenth of the amount. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health

A tenth of 12B would be 1.2B. This is a hundredth.

Apologies, physicists are often off by an order of magnitude ;)

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

#88

Post by protomyth »

JPKab wrote: post #83
UweSchmidt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points, and my thoughts exactly when I left university with a business degree. My take now: The workflows of large enterprises are not really well understood at all. With lean management and how management careers work, even the lowest management levels has only a vague idea what is actually happening in their departments. Designing even a tiny system for a small number of users requires a lot of time and a lot…

I'm not sure if you are assuming that I'm a naive guy who is fresh out of university or not. In case you are, I am not. I worked for a small company (I was the 6th employee, and it grew to 150 people) whose largest project was an ERP implementation for an extremely large enterprise which I shall not name, but you would immediately know them. I was not involved on the project directly, but was frequently pulled in to…

> General Electric is a model of how to implement an ERP. They followed the minimal customization model, and forced their workers to change their workflows to take advantage of the tool.

Yep, that's the model, but I contend it is a pretty poor model for everyone but the ERP vendor. It is basically saying the ERP or CRM vendor has a better grasp of a companies business process than the company. I have seen companies adopt a ERP and use its process, then anger customers because of the change. Since they follow a new path, many times it is IT telling the rest of the business how to run things[1] and much of the institutional knowledge is thrown out.

1) something as simple as what's on the invoice or payment voucher can have huge affects on customer experience in some industries.

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

#89

Post by arctangent »

tehwalrus wrote: post #30

Nowhere near as much as the £12Bn the NHS spent on an impossible moving-spec IT system that they also scrapped(1). Oh wait, it's a tenth of the amount. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health

Relevant recent news:

http://www.nao.org.uk/report/review-of-the-final-benefits-st...

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

#90

Post by JonnieCache »

rurounijones wrote: post #59
JonnieCache wrote: post #6

Note that the content in this CMS is hours and hours of raw video footage rather than the usual snippets of text.

hours? This is the BBC. It is probably months, possibly years worth of material.

Hours and hours and then more hours until you get to years.
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