Tim Almond

Wat Tyler over at Burning Our Money has a piece about the Defra Farm Payments Fiasco that drew my professional attention:-

She claims the central reason for this whole cock-up was that RPA management were far too optimistic about their ability to deliver, and as problems mounted failed to recognise the light in the tunnel as an oncoming train. What’s more, to save time, they’d "de-scoped" their new IT system to remove its management information functions, so they were driving blind.

To save time? So why not get the core functionality live and then implement the MIS afterwards? I’ve worked on plenty of projects that did that. If something’s got a monthly report, you don’t need it live until the start of the month following implementation. So don’t focus on it. Get the stuff that you need live first, and add the other bits after.

Also, what the heck kind of system are they working with? MIS is easy peasy. Replicate the database, install Crystal Reports/Business Objects and let the managers do their own reporting. This is cheap (by government standards), off-the-shelf, well-established and flexible technology. It takes a matter of hours to install this stuff.

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Tags: Politics, Software Development //