I have long argued that the IT community needs to separate IT failures from blunders.
Most organizations do not have enough IT project failures. The reason I say this is that, in my experience, most project cancellations (or escalations for that matter) are not true failures but instead represent blunders. There is a big difference. A project failure is one in which most project decisions and actions were correct at the time, but for some reason the project didn't work out. It is a professional project -- the project risks were assessed, managed, and accepted where required; the assumptions were checked; success criteria were defined; the plan was estimated and funded well; the stakeholders participated; and so on.
Project blunders, which I contend most project overruns and cancellations are, arise from Dilbert-like approaches to project management and implementation. There is little or no risk management, the project plan is a fantasy, stakeholder concerns are given short shrift, and on and on.
Well, in a distressingly familiar story in today's LA Times, yet another IT blunder is described. The lede paragraph reads as follows:
Since launching a $95-million computer system six months ago, the Los Angeles Unified School District has been beset by programming glitches, hardware crashes and mistakes by hurriedly trained clerical staff. The result: tens of thousands of teachers, cafeteria workers, classroom aides and others have been underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all.
Sounds like a blunder to me.
Let's see, there are some 14,500 school districts in the United States, along with over 4,000 colleges and universities. I would guess, 99.9% have automated payroll systems. I would also hazard that packaged payroll systems have been around since the mid-1960s - the LA's own payroll system has been around since 1967 or so.
And yet, after all this experience, a school system - even as large as LA's with 100,000 employees - cannot get a payroll system to work properly? INEXCUSABLE.
When the problems first appeared, it was claimed that only a small percentage of employees were affected. Now it looks like about 50% have been affected - so much for the effectiveness of their system testing.
"Let me apologize officially for this failure.There is no excuse for it. I apologize to anyone who has been hurt by this, " so said LA's school district Supt. David L. Brewer.
An apology, not matter how sincere, won't pay the bills. And LA taxpayers should refuse to pay for this IT blunder either.
