Eldad Moneta Reading Course on Software Development

Jake Widman, IT’s biggest project failures – and what we can learn from them. Computerworld, Oct Linda Geppert, Lost radio contact leaves pilots on their own. IEEE Spectrum, Nov 2004.

IBM 7030 – a.k.a Strech Company’s first transistorized super computer Delivered in 1961 Half-million instructions per second. Fastest computer in the world ‘till times faster Price dropped from $13.5M to $7.8M

Only 9 were ever built Strech shaped computer development: Pipelining Memory protection Memory interleaving

“Don’t throw away the baby out with the bathwater.”

Joint venture of Knight-Ridder newspapers and AT&T. In-home information-retrieval service “McDonald’s of videotex” vs up market consumer. Terminal cost 900$

20,000 subscribers Cost: 50$ Million

“Sometimes you can be so far ahead of the curve that you fall right off the edge.”

License Application Mitigation Project (LAMP) Automate the state's vehicle registration and license renewal processes 16$ Million over 5 years.

“When a project is obviously doomed to failure, get out sooner rather than later.”

4 th largest distributor of pharmaceuticals in the U.S worth $5 Billion SAP system and a warehouse automation system. 35$ Million project. unrealistically aggressive time line Implementation in 18 months Threatened warehouse employees

Processing 10,000 orders a night compared with 420,000 orders with the old mainframe. 1996: FoxMeyer filled for bankruptcy. Sold for 80$ Million.

“No one plans to fail, but even so, make sure your operation can survive the failure of a project. “

Microsoft window 95 came out System 8 – Copland: In house OS Feature Creep Project managers pushed for their products to be incorporated into System 8

A single developer release in late 1996 Purchase of NeXT Supplied the technology that became OS X

“Project creep is a killer. Keep your project's goals focused.“

British supermarket giant Automated fulfillment system in one of its distribution center Installed in 2003: Horrible bar-code reading errors. 2005: Company claims the system operates as intended.

2007: Entire project is scraped IT costs: 150£ million (=$265,335,000)

“A square peg in a round hole won't fit any better as time goes on.”

FBI Virtual Case File Homeland Security's virtual fence Census Bureau's handheld units

FBI Virtual Case File Census Bureau's handheld units

Automating case management and forms processing Congress approved $379.8 million for the Information Technology Upgrade Project. 2001: Projected changed to developing an entirely new system 2002: another $123.2 million for the project.

April 2005, SAIC delivered 700,000 lines of code Bug-ridden and useless FBI scrap the entire VCF project. Audit concluded: Short develop time: 22 Month Problematic rollout plans: a “flash cutover” Poorly defined system requirements Sentinel, 2012: off-the-shelf, Web-based software

$600M for 500,000 handheld devices to automate the 2010 census. Cost has more then doubled Use is going to be reduced 2007 rehearsal: Devices froze Failed to retrieve mapping coordinates Same identification numbers

Mitre Corp: “… the risks are so large… that we recommend immediate development of contingency plans to revert to paper operations.”

Linda Geppert, Lost radio contact leaves pilots on their own. IEEE Spectrum, Nov 2004.

14 September, pm Pacific daylight time: Air traffic controllers lost voice contact with 400 airplanes they were tracking over the southwestern United States VSCS- Voice Switching and Control System (Haris Corp.) FAA laid the blame on human error No one rebooted the system after 30 days

VSCU- VSCS Control Subsystem Upgrade (Installed 2003) Uses a timer as a pulse to send out periodic queries to the VSCS timer pulse ≈ 50 days

FAA continued operating the system with a known problem Only one backup system