Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 110 posts

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

#91

Post by alloowishus »

You would think somewhere in the contract it would specify that the payroll software, upon launching, most actually enable you to pay employees. I understand why IBM would make sure the government had some responsibility, but doesn't IBM have a responsibility to deliver something that actually works? Well, apparently not, and I'm sure if that WAS stipulated in the contract, they would never sign it. I have seen to the other side of the coin, I worked for a consulting web shop years ago where they created a bad contract worth 70K, which was at the time their biggest contract. Yay, high fives all around for the sales team. Unfortunately they ended up spending over 300k to get the system to actually work because the contract was so vague and the requirements so complex.

I smell some kind of corrupt kick back shinanegans going on here, I bet you somebody in the government got a new sports car from IBM to get that contract, and to have an endless maintenance part added in (which is where they make their money).

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

#92

Post by j45 »

deskamess wrote: post #67
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…

Not defending IBM, but IBM's job was to install "off the shelf software called PeopleSoft" to create a payroll system. They 'installed' it and walked away as that was what was required of them. They are now being called in to do more and that has contracting costs associated with it. The Govt of Canada has as much blame in this as anything - poorly written contracts with little knowledge of how software works.

Knowing how to buy and implement software is the responsibility, and therefore fault of both parties.

The service provider sounds like they either have not done this before, or are willing to make money off endless change requests.

The buyer's side in the government also likely has culpability in someone buying software who doesn't know how it's implemented.

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

#93

Post by ams6110 »

thisisit wrote: post #83
jasode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like all IBM projects now day the bulk of the work was done in India for likely less than $5 CAD/hr, This was a PeopleSoft install with customization and IBM typically doesn't use India workers for those types of projects. I don't know of this Canada project in particular but I have knowledge of half a dozen other IBM PeopleSoft contracts with the government and they use onsite developers for it. One of the big reas…

This is not installing Peoplesoft with customization. "Off the shelf" implies a simple install would do. Obviously it seems using a default Peoplesoft workflow is not enough.

There is no such thing as a "simple" install of PeopleSoft that is immediately usable. It's "consultingware." It requires configuration and customization before it can do anything useful at all.

Consultingware is a variant of shrinkwrap which requires so much customization and installation that you need an army of consultants to install it, at outrageous cost. CRM and CMS packages often fall in this category. One gets the feeling that they don’t actually do anything, they are just an excuse to get an army of consultants in the door billing at $300/hour. Although consultingware is disguised as shrinkwrap, the high cost of an implementation means this is really more like internal software.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/05/06/five-worlds/

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

#94

Post by amag »

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…

> btw there are amazing Indian coders, but you generally won't find many of them in these software houses producing the run of the mill code

My favorite story is when, at a company I worked, the maintenance of a security product with the potential to brick a machine was handed over to such a sweat-shop. My then manager, who was behind the outsourcing, called it a success when they had successfully installed the product and bricked their dev machines. "They have already installed it on their machines! (and now they are trying to circumvent it)".

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

#95

Post by throwaway5050 »

Undoubtedly, IBM is partially at fault. However, I strongly believe that a vast majority of the blame rests on the Canadian government's managers. My thinking comes from my experience working with government.

---

I work for a contractor that does the software development work for a large government entity (albeit smaller than the entire federal government of Canada). And while I have some incredible horror stories to tell, the following is particularly bad:

One project was particularly bad. During the initial requirements discovery phase, it appeared like a simple CRUD app. So, my firm proposed an architecture that suited the requirements we found. However, when the government employees in charge of managing the contractors looked at it, they tacked on a few requirements and changed several requirements/fundamental assumptions. So my firm adjusted the proposal and resubmitted. The cycle repeated several times. The government managers really wanted this particular project out as quickly as possible, so my firm had started building some of the basic parts of the application (i.e. creating the database tables, importing the models/relationships into the code base, designing the UI, etc.) before the architecture was finalized.

After a month with 5 engineers working on the project full-time, the managers decided to completely change the requirements altogether. So, we had to throw away everything we had made to date. That month of thrown away work costed the government $100k+ and they have literally nothing to show for it.

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

#96

Post by arethuza »

signal11 wrote: post #43
teh_klev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_)

I'm not sure that giving legislators macros is a good idea... (let alone reader macros)....

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

#97

Post by cleaver »

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…

I had a small company that did software consulting work for one of the provinces. Around 10+ years ago governments started requesting "off the shelf" solutions instead of custom-developed software. This led to a situation where they didn't own the code, were tied to vendor upgrade schedules, and had to pay a premium for customizations. This had the result of spiralling costs.

Each time there's a scandal, they tighten the rules so that ultimately only large companies with teams dedicated to writing proposals can compete.

To be fair:

- we worked on smaller projects of a scope where one person could maintain a mental model of the system

- nothing so mission critical as payroll

I expect the pendulum to swing back toward more internal development and greater ownership and autonomy. So far, not much has changed.

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

#98

Post by deskamess »

j45 wrote: post #92
deskamess wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not defending IBM, but IBM's job was to install "off the shelf software called PeopleSoft" to create a payroll system. They 'installed' it and walked away as that was what was required of them. They are now being called in to do more and that has contracting costs associated with it. The Govt of Canada has as much blame in this as anything - poorly written contracts with little knowledge of how software works.

Knowing how to buy and implement software is the responsibility, and therefore fault of both parties. The service provider sounds like they either have not done this before, or are willing to make money off endless change requests. The buyer's side in the government also likely has culpability in someone buying software who doesn't know how it's implemented.

I am not sure IBM should do something they were not asked to do. Not what they quoted for, IMO.

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

#99

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

throwaway5050 wrote: post #95

Undoubtedly, IBM is partially at fault. However, I strongly believe that a vast majority of the blame rests on the Canadian government's managers. My thinking comes from my experience working with government. --- I work for a contractor that does the software development work for a large government entity (albeit smaller than the entire federal government of Canada). And while I have some incredible horror stories to…

Repeat after me, class, "not properly managing Requirements is the most common cause of project failure."

Been known for decades, if not centuries.

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

#100

Post by danmaz74 »

bpyne wrote: post #69

"But when it comes to Phoenix, Aylward isn't focusing his blame on IBM. Like the procurement experts, he faults the scope of the initial contract for the resulting failure." Twenty-six years of developing software, I haven't worked on a project yet that was any better than 60% specified. This inability of people to specify, in full and in detail, what they want is the reason for the rise of Agile. A colleague of mine…

Golden words.
Post reply on HN