Failed software development

Question

I have to do a project based on failed software development and implementation in any organizations or case from the internet and then do a forensic investigation on it. can anyone suggest how can i do this project. I have no idea about failed project. Can anyone suggest me....

Answer 1

To get your bearings I'd suggest browsing through the risks archive. Wired also has an article on the 10 worst bugs.

Answer 2

UK NHS National Patient Records System. Estimated to cost $700M in 2002. Still going, with costs currently at $117Bn from all contractors. Search google for more information.(At TechEd 2008 they used it as an example of how not to manage a complex project)

Though you maby have difficulty getting access to enough information to be able to do a "forensic" examination :)

Answer 3

IT Project Failures, a ZDNet blog, has some news articles about some failed implementations, generally involving large systems with rather large budgets.

"Waste Management suing SAP" for more than $100,000,000 over a failed ERP implementation would be a more specific example that you could inspect by looking at various legal documents that each company has put forth as evidence in the case.

Answer 4

I highly recommend you check out the book In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters (no affiliate link ;)

It contains case studies of a whole mess of early failed software projects, and is a quite entertaining read too :)

Answer 5

An interesting list of IT project failures along withs costs and reasons : http://it-project-failures.blogspot.com/

Answer 6

The baggage handling system for the denver international airport is a well documented project failure. there are lots of post mortems on the project ie. lessons learned, risk assessments and the like.

Answer 7

Part of one of my Software Engineering classes involved this kind of work. We all had to give a presentation on one Software disaster that resulted in loss of life. A couple of people chose the London Ambulance Service Dispatching System, but I decided on the Therac-25.

The Therac-25 was a radiation therapy machine produced by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) and CGR MeV of France after the Therac-6 and Therac-20 units. It was involved with at least six accidents between 1985 and 1987, in which patients were given massive overdoses of radiation, approximately 100 times the intended dose.[1] Three of the six patients died. These accidents highlighted the dangers of software control of safety-critical systems, and they have become a standard case study in health informatics.

Two very interesting projects with lots of information to pick up on.

Answer 8

The sinking of the Titanic, from a project management perspective. Mark Kozak-Holland wrote a book about the Titanic, Titanic Lessons for IT Projects and all the project management errors that went into the sinking of the ship. It has it all, egos, unrealistic deadlines, quality decreased to hit cost \ dates. My favorite is leaders not listening to the truth because they were so blinded by pressures from bosses \ shareholders. A humbling read for those of us in the project management field.

Answer 9

Here's one that I'm actually really curious about:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/messaging/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207001691

The census bureau spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to put the data collection process on Windows Mobile devices, but the project had to be scrapped.