About the $200M Oracle-Ford Desaster: the management did not give them enough power to go fully agile
Chet Hendrickson:
It was a very frustrating situation. The team asked Don and me to help with preventing the Oracle consutants from making changes directly to the production system. This was about $150 million into the project. We tried to sell them on a more agile approach (as you might imagine), but by this time they were pretty far gone. It was unfortunante that we were not operating at a level in the organization that would have allowed us to get the plug pulled sooner. chet
Georg Tuparev has a nice case story, too: speak out if you are put on a death march.
Few years ago I was called to lead a huge team stuck in one and half year design phase. The team was supposed to build a control software for a network of telecom satellites. Cannot disclosed names and resources, but one could imagine ... Three days in the project I had a phone conference with the CxO's of both companies involved. Told them that the way it is going no satellite will ever fly and that I know a better way. After getting green line, the design document was burned with a small celebration at a BBQ, and 85% of the initial team members were sent to an indefinitely long vacation. With the rest (15%) of the team we had the first functioning version 2 months ahead of the schedule and 50% lower then expected expenses. So the lessons: - it is never late to change direction of a project in order to save it. - I do not agree with Kent that this is a sad story. If you are a good programmer put on a death march project you should speak out! If no one listens - walk away. There is just one very precious life in front of us - do not waste it! And if these folks wasted 2 years of their lives, well, it is their business ... but they should not expect my sympathies. BTW, Philip is right - the project I was telling about had a 9 months x 40 people "Big Requirements Up Front"!!! Then the design started... Just my 0.02 Georg Tuparev