Most disastrous project you've ever worked on

[DiscoStu]

Mine has been mentioned on the news today

Anyone else care to share some stories about abysmally bad projects you've worked on?

[EternalOptimist]

Mine has been mentioned on the news today

Anyone else care to share some stories about abysmally bad projects you've worked on?

why was it so bad DS ?

[DS23]

dunno. looks ok from here.

[chef]

a project i worked on for 18 months with continually changing requirements because the initial requirements spec wasnt in any way clear.. no documentation was produced on orders of management as "we dont have time for development and documentation", eventually just 2 weeks before release the project was shelved

hold on.. no, that's the best project i've worked on

there's rumours that it's going to be revived, as there is no documentation to say how it works i believe i might be getting a phone call sometime soon

[DiscoStu]

why was it so bad DS ?

It's the DFT Shared Service Centre that ran millions of quid over budget and months behind schedule.

Guess that's what happens when you decide to try and merge seven different payroll / hr / finance departments into one and then grant them all hundreds of exceptions because they're all kicking up a stink about not wanting to change their existing processes.

So instead of having one set of standard processes for doing things, it ended up with several badly documented ones which would vary from team to team. SAP would then have to be configured for all these hundreds of exceptions / different ways of working and it all just seems to have ended up a bit of a mess

[Wilmslow]

Mine has been mentioned on the news today

Anyone else care to share some stories about abysmally bad projects you've worked on?

Ah, you must be the German Developer.........

Could not help but laugh when I heard it on BBC news!

[Peoplesoft bloke]

my attempts to restore a 1956 Chevrolet 210 to working order - years over budget and way behind schedule.

[minestrone]

"A project to upgrade the computer system which holds records of criminal convictions in Scotland is seven times over budget and almost three years' late, it has been reported.

The new version of the Criminal History System (CHS), ordered in 1999, was supposed to cost taxpayers £1.5m but is now expected to be more than £10m, according to The Herald newspaper.

Justice minister Cathy Jamieson announced last year the CHS, which was originally supposed to go live in March 2004, would be delayed by two years. But the system has been hit by yet another delay and will not now be introduced before December 2006, said the newspaper."


http://www.policeoracle.com/news/pri...il.cfm?id=9230

[DimPrawn]

Most distastrous project was one that had fantastic documentation, test plans, design documents, architecture, change control and crystal clear requirements.

Damn project completed on time, with very few issues and no one was extended.

[Doggy Styles]

AEW (Nimrod upgrade).

It was canned in 1987 after about £1 billion, which was quite a lot then. Its two biggest problems that I knew of were:

1. Choice of airframe - someone insisted on using the cramped Comet for the new planes, instead of a lush Boeing.

2. Mission creep by the R*F