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Case Studies: Software Systems Failure

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Software nightmare stories are very common - but one thing I've learned by listening to these stories over the years is the technologist must be optimist at heart.  Why - because they deal constantly with tons of failure.  And out of those failures they create innovative disruptive new sectors of the world economy (sometimes, case in point the Apple Newton and then the iPod and iPhone).



Let's look at a few case studies.

Time has just published a look at the Obama Healthcare rescue team.  Code Red by Steven Brill

"What were the tech problems?  Where they beyond repair? Nothing I saw was beyond repair.  Yes, it was messed up.  Software wasn't built to talk to other software, stuff like that.  A lot of that,"  Abbott continues, "was because they had made the most basic mistake you can ever make.  The government is not used to shipping products to consumers.  You never open a service like this to everyone at once.  You open it in small concentric circles and expand" -- such as one state first, then a few more -- "so you can watch it, fix it and scale it."
What Abbott could not find, however, was leadership.  He says that to this day he cannot figure out who was supposed to have been in charge of the HealthCare.gov launch."

The Secret Startup That Saved the Worst Website in America  How a team of young people, living in a repurposed McMansion in Maryland, helped rebuild Healthcare.gov

Stock Options? Don’t Need ‘Em! I’m Coding For Uncle Sam! (Medium)
The people behind the new government agency that’s recruiting the nation’s best tech talent to reform its hideous computer systems.
"The Healthcare.gov experience shows how great the differences can be. In newly released figures, the government says that constructing the original enrollment system, known as the Federally Facilitated Marketplace operating system, cost $200 million and would have required $70 million a year to maintain. The new version of the site, revamped by USDS engineers from Google, Y Combinator startups and other commercial tech outposts, cost $4 million to produce, with annual maintenance costs also $4 million."
Or take a look at an Agile/Scrum successful rescue -- the FBI Sentinel case management system.
FBI's Sentinel Project: 5 Lessons Learned by InformationWeek's John Foley
Case Study of a Difficult Federal Government Scrum Project: FBI Sentinel by Michael James
DoD Goes Agile by Jeff Sutherland 
DOJ's Report on Sentinel Project by Inspector General - Dec. 2011
How the FBI Proves Agile Works for Gov. Agencies by CIO's Jason Bloomberg
"Wait, agile rescued a huge money-pit fiasco of a government project? You mean, iterative, skunkworks, put-the-customer-on-the-team, forget-the-plan agile? You betcha. Agile turned out to be the hero in the tights and cape, coming to save the day."

Effective Practices and Federal Challenges in Applying Agile Methods  GAO-12-681: Published: Jul 27, 2012
What can one make from failure? Well, author John Kotter of the airport best seller's shelf (Leading Change) created his 8 step model from investigating why companies consistently fail to institute the desired organizational changes that they assumed were mission critical. His conclusion, if they had just done eight things well then the organizational change would have succeeded.
So what can we learn from two of the US governments most recent software project failures?  I think it can be summarized in one phrase - the Big Bang model only works for universes (or God).  The rest of us better learn how to iterate, grow, and evolve systems.


Mary Poppendieck wrights about the ING transition to agile... The End of the Enterprise IT
"It was a bold move for the Netherlands bank. The leaders were giving up their traditional hierarchy, detailed planning and “input steering” (giving directions). Instead they would trust empowered teams, informal networks, and “output steering” (responding to feedback) to move the bank forward. The bank was not in trouble; it did not really need to go through such a dramatic change."
"Despite the challenges, ING Netherlands views its new organizational structure as a significant success with sizable benefits to the company. The strategy adopted by ING Netherlands – an organizational structure composed of small, integrated teams, along with an emphasis on simple customer journeys, automated processes, and highly skilled engineers – is expected to spread to other parts of ING Bank."
Did your company start a "Digital Transformation" in the last decade?  Many did - I couldn't ever tell what that meant... I've been doing digital stuff since the 1980s ... that transformation happened when we adopted the Personal Computer and put a PC on everyone's desk.  I remember teaching people how to use a mouse (it wasn't a natural concept).

Digital Dreams that never came True

HBR has a warning: "Why So Many High-Profile Digital Transformations Fail" - March, 2018 from companies such as:  GE, Burberry, Nike, Ford, P&G, and my fav LEGO.
"With innovative information technology, however, executives sometimes lose their rational decision approaches. Certainly it’s true that in times of radical technological change there’s a lot of figuring out to do.  Executives have to understand what new technologies can do, and understand their impact on markets, products/services, and distribution channels.  These decisions are inevitably influenced by hype from vendors and the media, expensive consultants offering “thought leadership” insights, many high profile experiments, and a few exciting success stories that keep people wanting more. A charismatic CIO or Chief Digital Officer may make it even harder to be level-headed in those heady times."

   See Also:
Before Scaling up, Consider...

Agile Failure Disrupting Organizational Performance - by Agilitrix

Agile Succeeds 3X more than Waterfall - CHAOS Report 2011 - MountainGoat Software
ObjectMentor success stories:
    Primavera
    Sabre takes extreme measures - ComputerWorld

A struggle within MIT’s IT department over its future by Drew Bent
"Led by IS&T’s vice president, John Charles, the ambitious reorganization began in February 2015 and aims to spur innovation through agile software development practices adopted from industry. Charles emphasizes that this is not a typical reorganization, but rather a complete transformation of MIT’s IT department."

The famous SalesForce all-in, one day transition
    Slideshare presentation   The Development Dilemma PDF

Scrum at Scale Keynote 2015 (Scrum Inc.) - has infographic from 2015 Chaos Report




A Case Study of SME Web Application Development Effectiveness via Agile Methods  by: Peter Clutterbuck, Terry Rowlands and Owen Seamons University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Agile Delivery at British Telecom  by Ian Evans, British Telecom  (Methods and Tools)


Live from LA Success Tour: 5 Stories of Agile Success (RallyDev)

 LeSS Case Studies (over a dozen, mostly European companies)

 Microsoft's agile case study - would you believe it? by Steve Denning of Forbes

Whole Foods Market case study Home Grown Agile - An Agile journey with one of America’s most trusted brands.

In 2016 there is a preponderance of organizations stating they are doing Digital Transformation.  What could this term mean?  Are they changing from analog to digital systems -or- are they mutating all employee numbers from arabic to binary?

Southwest Airlines’ Digital Transformation Takes Off - FastCompany
Rolling out new software is hard in any company, but it’s even harder when your employees still send faxes.

David Anderson suggest Agile is Costing You Too Much - makes the case that there are few if any Agile Case studies and publishes 8 Kanban case studies.  I loved the Sabre story David tells of circa 2006 Sabre reboot of "agile", I lived through a 2011-2013 reboot at Sabre.  They are continually rebooting that initiative - pondering why?
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