An off the shelf software solution

[ContractTester]

An off the shelf software project - Part One

I should probably post Part one of the saga

https://youtu.be/jZZ0MUPW5MU

It's all very sad. This big American corporation rode into town and unloaded their junk COTs project on a naïve government department.

The system being implemented was a tiny legacy application with about a dozen in house staff and approximately 10,000 external customers.

The main driver was to take the legacy adabas system off the mainframe and replace it with a configurable Case Management COTS product.

Smooth talking salesmen said that there would be no need for developers. The business users could be trained to configure the off the shelf software solution.

Three years later and many millions of dollars down the drain we have a dogs breakfast of a solution. The product could not talk to our oracle databases so JAVA developers had to be recruited to develop a layer between the product and the database.

Configuring the product requires highly skilled consultants who have a systems architectural understanding of the entire framework. Any change can ripple and bring down the entire system.

Dates are incorrectly formatted and have to be fixed one field at a time, the system runs like a dog and users are periodically thrown out and cant log back in.

System has been live for two months now and a dozen new production bugs are raised each day.

Business are fuming. What a mess. The original senior managers who were part of the selection and were flown on junkets to the USA have retired. (Probably got a nice fat brown envelope to help with that.

A bloody disaster and its still unfolding.

[vetran]

Your display pic is quite concerning ...

your dad had a bike?

[FatLazyContractor]

@OP

Your display pic is quite concerning ...

[xoggoth]

Nowt I can't do with Excel and my 1998 VB6 student edition. Could knock up a Europe wide security system in hours.

[vetran]

Given that we are now in 2016 why are there people employed to make these decisions who seem to struggle to differentiate between an etch-a-sketch and an I-pad.

Been doing IT projects for approx. 20 years now and I have seen projects fail so badly simply due to the fact the software simply cannot do what the business wants without completely bending it out of shape.

because a lot of the time they want to bend it out of shape for 1% of actual use.

Instead of getting 99% working they focus on the 1% that they aren't making any money out of anyway.

[original PM]

Given that we are now in 2016 why are there people employed to make these decisions who seem to struggle to differentiate between an etch-a-sketch and an I-pad.

Been doing IT projects for approx. 20 years now and I have seen projects fail so badly simply due to the fact the software simply cannot do what the business wants without completely bending it out of shape.

[cojak]

I particularly admire OOTB sales. Every service management tool pushes this and I always dance a little jig knowing it will take me twice as long to unravel the customer's requirements than if they had got me in at the beginning.

[eek]

Oh yes. COTS. I make a good living sorting out COTS. The customer always believes the rubbish the salesman tells them.

Yep. I fix them after the consultancy / consultancies have screwed things up.

It's always fun when the conversation begins Microsoft recommended....

[cojak]

Oh yes. COTS. I make a good living sorting out COTS. The customer always believes the rubbish the salesman tells them.

[vetran]

you contracting to my bunch?

Oracle all over..

[ContractTester]

This video is a sad but true description of how my current project struggled to implement a system using a COTS solution.
https://youtu.be/HjQxKozZ_dA