On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Grant Maw <[email protected]> wrote: > $360M makes QLD Health Payroll system debacle (which is based on > SAP/Workbrain) a baby at a mere $40M, and I echo Greg's sentiments about > doing it for half that price. > > It'll never happen but I'd love to see a post-mortem (pun intended) > detailing what made this project such a catastrophe. Amongst other things, > they've had to get private security guards in to protect payroll staff from > lynching, according to the Courier Mail.
The more money you have, the more you feel you need to spend to get a good result. The more money available, the greedier and more dishonest people get. It is also a pattern (but not a fact) that as companies get larger their development practices get slower (and often worse) and hence more expensive. These factors almost always result in any government spending on any particular project being ridiculous compared to what it would take anyone of reasonable competency to complete. The answer is obviously to either have smaller projects, or have some rational selection strategy for companies to provide services. Of course, being government, selection strategies aren't what the general public would consider "rational". -- silky http://www.programmingbranch.com/
