In an Emergency...
The Dashboard Spy offers a post describing emergency management information software. I researched these issues in-depth several years ago (conducted lots of interviews with government and industry leaders), to learn about emergency management processes and software. Anyone seriously looking at project failures can learn from these systems.
Mr. Spy points out a few goals that such a software system must accomplish:
- Quick identification of source of system failure, scope of the crisis and its consequences.
- Anticipation of potential evolution
- Specification of interrelated risks
- Estimation of resources needed
- Identification of available external resources
- Estimation of response costs
- Archive incident log into database
- Evaluation of response operations after crisis
Many of these points should be included in any software designed for managing troubled projects — among other things, you’d want the tool to help track what happened, identify who was involved, give you a heads-up on related issues, provide information to help you predict further development of the situation, and so on.
If you or yours are designing a such a tool and are willing to share your plans in confidence, let me know.
PS. Thanks for the post, Mr. Spy. In the future, will you allow me to address you less formally?