Giant Steps
Dear Gentle Reader: Please forgive the digression, but this post is not about project failures.Occasionally something comes along which I want to share.
Beyond IT Failure
Michael Krigsman is a recognized authority on the causes and prevention of IT failures.
Michael Krigsman
Michael Krigsman, CEO of consulting and research firm Asuret, is an international authority on IT success, social business transformation, and related CIO issues. For more information, visit mkrigsman.com.
Latest Posts
Open Source ERP: Training Doesn't Matter??
The following quote is taken from an article explaining key differences between open source and commercial ERP software:Open Source ERP does not require much training. The source code is more than a training manual.
Consultant Addiction
Dan Tynan writes in InfoWorld about consultants who seem to hang around forever and suggests methods for escape. You know the type: they rack up endless billing for their clients without much to show for it.
UK Health Program: a Very Sick Patient
The National Health Service is in the middle of a massive ”£12bn IT programme designed to keep electronic records of 30 million NHS patients throughout the UK.” This program has been ongoing since 2002 and has been called the greatest IT disaster in history.
Implementation and Consultants
An interesting discussion related to consulting ecosystems, software implementation failures, and complexity, from Charles Zedlewski’s blog.From the discussion (quoting myself this time):Implementation failures generally do not have a root cause based in technology.
Election Troubles
The Anchorage Daily News reports about technical problems with new Diebold voting machines. From the article:Problems with Alaska’s new touchscreen voting machines slowed election returns Tuesday and caused elections officials to hand count and manually upload vote totals from several precincts across the state.
BOOK REVIEW: Race Through the Forest
Project management and planning errors are often an important cause of the failures described in this blog, so I read the recent book Race Through the Forest with great interest. The book was written by Timothy L.
Taxing Problems
The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that $2-300 million of fraudulent US tax refunds were paid due to an IT project screw-up. From the article:“The management efforts of both the IRS and its contractor to improve our automated-refund fraud-detection system were insufficient and are unacceptable,” IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said in a statement Friday.
Gasp! Military Cost Over-Runs
Government Computer News reports that cost over-runs on software projects are a problem at the Department of Defense. Anyway, from the article:The problem is huge.
Free Medicare Money! Oops, not so fast.
Senior Journal reports that the Medicare program erroneously sent out $50 million in drug refunds to seniors, due to an unspecified computer glitch. Unfortunately, the seniors who received over-payments must return the money.