[Sigia-l] Mother of all examples

[tOM Trottier]

Approx 8m guns, about $1 billion Cdn to develop & operate 1995-2005. 
Overruns due to
 - application to existing guns, gun owners
    - vainglorious objectives (complicated long questionnaire, new vetting 
    procedures - spouse, psychiatrist, police, ...)
 - political bickering
     - obstructive provinces and territories - 10 of 12...
     - reluctant gun owners - had to reduce prices, spend oodles on ads
     - within government, between depts/agencies/police forces, ...
    - dispersed system with an inappropriate technical architecture
 - startup backlogs
    - unforeseen tasks, eg, created, for the very first time, an 
    encyclopaedia of all existing guns with pictures and descriptions

Operating costs are definitely not 20x "original full cost". This would 
be $2.5 billion/year, not the $25m they have been set at. This is a 
multiple of the original "net" costs after cost recovery by fee, but to 
gain adoption, fees were eliminated.

There were technical failings, but the main problem was the politics. 
It needed cooperation from a multiplicity of players which it did not 
get. Also work had to be geographically distributed, leading to 
performance and security expenses and problems.

Changing the scope and working around or persuading reluctant 
cooperators spun the money wheel. 

For me the lessons are:
    - start smaller with essentials, then grow the system comprehensiveness
-   use existing data/systems, but be aware of the effect of your 
    connections with the systems
-   plan for exceptions and allow a certain amount of imperfection (eg, 
    get pix of the actual few guns of unknown manufacture rather than seach 
    for obscure pix)
-   rollout gradually to ease transition workload, tune procedures
-   for geographically displersed systems, don't use a LAN-type 
    architecture. The latency will kill you
    - don't oversell 
    - use both the carrot and the stick to assist cooperation

tOM

PS, see
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/guncontrol/
http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/whatdidtaxpayersget.htm

On 18 Jan 2005 at 10:48,
Donna Fritzsche <donnamarie at amichi.info> wrote:

> >
> >The annual operating costs of the program are now more than 20 times 
> >higher than the original full cost.
> >--
> How many guns do they have in Canada?  How much is that per gun? : )
> 
> Whats sad is this type of fiasco happens all over (usually to a 
> smaller degree.)
> What is the problem?
> 
> I would point to a few specifics:
> 1. The wrong people making high-level technical architecture 
> decisions (purchasing products before the right research has been 
> done.)
> 2. Not paying up front to hire the best people for  high-level positions.
> 3. Not allowing your team leaders to put together the teams that they see fit.
> 4. Underestimating the time it takes too pull off  a project of this 
> magnitude (including preliminary testing, beta-testing, etc.)  (I 
> dont mean user testing here - but rather technical 
> testing/simulation, user-testing too would be great).
> 
> Any other observations, comments?
> 
> Thanks,
> Donna
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