On: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing...

[Murkin]

Would you sign to build a project who's MVP is 260,000 salary calculations with rules poorly documented and spread other hundreds of agencies?

Maybe if they started with a subset and slowly built up..

[cjalmeida → Murkin]

This problem was likely better served by many smaller systems that better fit the specific needs.

Government is way too complex to try to cram all rules into a single monolith like Oracle's PeopleSoft.

[rpeden → cjalmeida]

If what I've read is accurate, the various departments were already served by smaller systems that fit their specific needs.

The intention with Phoenix was to save money by consolidating them all into one. Oops.

At least part of the problem is that projects like this don't end up being awarded to those who are most capable of completing them successfully. Instead, they end up being awarded to companies and consultancies who are experts at shepherding proposals through the RFP process.