List of failed and over-budget custom software projects

In 2006 I worked briefly on an air-traffic control system (ERAM) that was eventually delivered 5 years late and $400M over budget. I was a small cog in a giant government-contract-software machine, but it was easy to see the project was going to be a disaster.<p>There are some pretty basic strategies to make building &quot;large&quot; software easier. All of them were attempted, but in an entirely broken way:<p>- Break the architecture down into smaller components <i>that can be tested independently</i>.<p>- Break the functionality down into smaller features <i>that can be released independently</i>.<p>- Develop automated tests <i>at the system level</i> (i.e. integration tests, not unit tests).<p>The software took 2-4 minutes to launch in development, and very few of us knew how to meaningfully test it. This meant that any change that compiled (and passed code review) would ship.<p>Oh yeah - and the system used binary structures in shared memory to communicate across processes, which were running code written in two entirely different languages.

I remember, when as a resident of Oregon, I was wondering why we couldn&#x27;t sign up with the national healthcare system. I then noticed that the Cover Oregon system was being built by Oracle.<p>Suffice to say, I wasn&#x27;t the least bit surprised that it was a complete and total catastrophe, and even less surprised that Oracle tried to sue Oregon for attempting to use the software. Nothing like LDD - Lawyer Driven Development.

The modern NHS system in the UK was the biggest fuck up I have ever seen. I worked with people who also worked on the project. They are seriously amazing people but apparently all the layers of management, red tape and politics was, according to my friends, the worst they have ever experienced. Two friends were so traumatised by the experience they ended up taking 2 years off work to travel&#x2F;recover.<p>The sad thing is it shouldn&#x27;t have been such a difficult thing to develop. Complex sure but no more complex than many other similar systems. It was destroyed by too much meddling from the government adding, removing and changing the spec every other day and many, many managers just finding non-sense jobs that were totally pointless.<p>It is shocking it went so over budget and was allowed to continue doing so for so, so long.

I should sit down and add the failed IT projects of the Danish government, but I don&#x27;t have that kind of time. Our government is notorious for initiating software projects that ends in almost predictable failure.<p>The latest project to fail was a system for the Danish Tax Office. It was suppose to automatically collect debt owed by citizens and companies.It&#x27;s not entirely certain how that was suppose to work and it has been described as a utopia project with an unprecedented expectation of what kind of problem computers are capable of handling. The specification where 9000 pages long, tax law not included, and some how failing to supply a sufficient amount of actual requirements. It failed, of cause, costing almost $150.000.000 (DKK 1.000.000.0000), not including the 78 Billion Danish Kroner the tax office haven&#x27;t been able to collect due the system not being delivered on time and generally not working.

Can someone explain to me how the fuck my government can spend <i>15.8bn</i>[1] on a software project? We could build 5 Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers for that. Five! For the cost of a bloated Java app!<p>Seriously, someone fill me in please. How can a software project possibly ever cost more than a billion pounds? You could employ 20,000 software engineers full time for £50K ($70k) a year for that much, and I expect the number of engineers working on Universal Credit is much lower than that and paid less.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Universal_Credit#Costs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Universal_Credit#Costs</a>

IEEE Spectrum had a great series of interactive information graphics on &#x27;Lessons from a decade of IT failures&#x27; [0].<p>In particular, &quot;The Staggering Impact of IT Systems Gone Wrong&quot; [1] and &quot;Monuments to failure&quot; [2] are good lists of failures, many of which are not included on Wikipedia&#x27;s list.<p>[0]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrum.ieee.org&#x2F;static&#x2F;lessons-from-a-decade-of-it-failures" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrum.ieee.org&#x2F;static&#x2F;lessons-from-a-decade-of-it-...</a><p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrum.ieee.org&#x2F;static&#x2F;the-staggering-impact-of-it-systems-gone-wrong" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrum.ieee.org&#x2F;static&#x2F;the-staggering-impact-of-it-...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrum.ieee.org&#x2F;static&#x2F;monuments-to-failure" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrum.ieee.org&#x2F;static&#x2F;monuments-to-failure</a>

The primary problem with lists like this is that they don&#x27;t compare to successes.<p>For example:<p>* I&#x27;ve been on projects where we&#x27;re rewritten applications from the ground up that were totally successful and we were better able to build in the future because we had a clean setup.<p>* I&#x27;ve seen government IT shops hire contractors to do a large project and ended up with something better than the internal devs would have done.<p>Both of these are situations where the opposite case (time-consuming and expensive failure) gets a lot of attention. (and, in my experience, failure is more common). Show me one of those failures and my instinct is to say &quot;Of COURSE that was a failure! It was obviously going to fail!&quot;. But, in reality, not always.<p>Rather than building unhelpful conventional wisdom, we should be trying to understand the distinctions between the failures and the successes.

96% of government IT procurements over $10m are deemed failures.[1]<p>Absolutely shocking how ineffective the system of contractors and RFPs is. Part of it is a mindset, part of it is just needing better options.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;wonk&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2013&#x2F;10&#x2F;22&#x2F;the-lessons-of-healthcare-gov-stretch-far-beyond-obamacare&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;wonk&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2013&#x2F;10&#x2F;22&#x2F;the-l...</a>

When it comes to government projects, I always wonder how many people involved treat it only as an opportunity to make as much money as possible without being caught - after several years you just sweep the whole thing under carpet so nobody remembers how much money has been wasted and you&#x27;re set.

These lists seem a little short. What about:<p>* The Distributed Computing Environment (or at least the OS&#x2F;2 portion of it, anyway), <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Distributed_Computing_Environment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Distributed_Computing_Environm...</a><p>* Taligent, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Taligent" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Taligent</a><p>* IBM Workplace OS, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;IBM_Workplace_OS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;IBM_Workplace_OS</a><p>And that&#x27;s just a few from off my personal resume.

&gt;This article contains one or more incomplete lists which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness<p>Well isn&#x27;t that ironic.

SAP doesn&#x27;t even get a mention?<p>Waste Management: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;2517917&#x2F;enterprise-applications&#x2F;sap--waste-management-settle-lawsuit.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;2517917&#x2F;enterprise-appl...</a><p>Levi&#x27;s: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2008&#x2F;07&#x2F;10&#x2F;levis_erp_costs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2008&#x2F;07&#x2F;10&#x2F;levis_erp_costs&#x2F;</a>

Would have been much easier to create a list of projects that were completed within budget (assuming that&#x27;s ever actually happened).

Note: very few, if any, of these examples failed because someone on the team didn&#x27;t pass a coding test. Next time you interview someone remember: bad code could bring your project down, but there are 9 other factors that are more likely to bring your project down.

Great idea.<p>The UK tried a NOMS (offender management) system and that was an expensive disaster too..<p>Would be nice to put down the contracting companies who were ripping of the Govt along with the civil servants who over saw the massive waste of tax payers money&#x2F;time.

Of course, there&#x27;s a level of disclosure for Government run projects that means their blunders get exposed more easily.<p>I&#x27;m quite sure there are some spectacular failures in the corporate world that won&#x27;t make the list.

Now we need a list of overbudget customized COTS software projects.<p>With all these companies running on Excel macros, years old SAP R&#x2F;2 or 3 (just two common examples) and so on, the list will be extensive.<p>(COTS = commercial off-the-shelf)

That list is much short than the headline would imply. I was afraid of a list of thousand of projects, with a final footnote of &quot;Every Enterprise software application ever written.&quot;

For those interested in this topic, I highly recommend episode 181 of the Omega Tau podcast, &quot;Why Megaprojects Fail (and what to do about it)&quot; [1].<p>It&#x27;s a fascinating listen into the psychology behind gigantic failures.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;omegataupodcast.net&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;181-why-megaprojects-fail-and-what-to-do-about-it&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;omegataupodcast.net&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;181-why-megaprojects-fail...</a>

As a side note, I cannot understand why these articles are written in a table format. Where there are cells with such a long description, bullets would be much suitable.

I was trying to look for patterns in these projects. Looks like most of them were outsourced and most of them were US&#x2F;UK Government projects. It would be interesting to see patterns in very successful US&#x2F;UK Government projects.<p>My personal experience has been that it almost always boils down to upper management&#x2F;leadership issues, that result in hiring weak project managers which in turn leads to talent drain on the implementation side.

I will document my bias before reading the article in the hope that I am proven wrong.<p>I estimate that most of these have occurred in apparatus of the state, including organizations that superficially are not but for all practical purposes (funding, license, regulation) are.<p>Wise man once say: there&#x27;s nothing easier in this world than spending someone else&#x27;s money.

I see a lot of billions, with a b, and then I look at what small teams do on bootstrapping or little seed rounds. The mind boggles.

The Software Engineering Radio podcast did an episode on this recently:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.se-radio.net&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;se-radio-epislode-250-jurgen-laartz-and-alexander-budzier-on-why-large-it-projects-fail&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.se-radio.net&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;se-radio-epislode-250-jurgen...</a>

I&#x27;m surprised the outsourcing companies aren&#x27;t listed on this. They are often huge contributors to the overruns.

&quot;Sabina SEIFERT&#x27;s Project: Software Project Failures&quot;<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scism.lsbu.ac.uk&#x2F;inmandw&#x2F;past&#x2F;9697&#x2F;projects&#x2F;prj127.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scism.lsbu.ac.uk&#x2F;inmandw&#x2F;past&#x2F;9697&#x2F;projects&#x2F;prj12...</a>

Why are these all in the UK or US? Better transparency?

As far as I can see all software built in Germany always ships on time and is within budget. Or maybe the page needs an update :-)

this is why haskell has support for infinite lists

This is by no means a conclusive list.

...in UK and US. Apparently other countries never had any of these.

when they list healthcare.gov has costed 1.5bn, does that include setting up the back office and staffing, or simply the project that responsible for putting the website?

See Also: Agile Software Development

Did nobody mention Xanadu?