Seven out of ten government IT projects fail[1]. The last government wasted 26 billion pounds on projects that ran over budget or were scrapped[2]. Government IT procurement is an absolute shambles and I cannot imagine how it could be any worse.<p>British libel law prevents me from stating an opinion about Mr Maughan or his work. The defence of fair comment is so weakened as to be useless. As such, I will not state any opinion on the quality of this article. Fortunately, a comment which is merely abusive is not libellous, so I can call him a fuckwit.<p>[1]<a href="http://www.silicon.com/management/public-sector/2007/05/18/failed-seven-out-of-10-gov-it-projects-39167189/" rel="nofollow">http://www.silicon.com/management/public-sector/2007/05/18/f...</a>
[2]<a href="http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2001612/labour-accused-wasting-gbp26bn-failed-it-projects" rel="nofollow">http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2001612/labour-accused-wastin...</a>
"Under Agile projects, you pay a given amount of money for a set amount of effort. But you can't guarantee a specified outcome for a specific price."<p>You always run this risk when writing software. The only difference with waterfall is that you can pretend that you won't have cost overruns.<p>If you want a guaranteed price for something, don't use custom code.