terça-feira, 15 de outubro de 2013

IT project failures


In the previous sidebar I used Enron as an example of why governance within a company is needed. IT projects also have a tendency to go seriously wrong if there isn’t a good governance or control mechanism in place. One of the most talked-about examples is the Denver International Airport’s automated baggage system. This baggage system, created for the new airport, was designed to route all the passenger’s bags to and from aircraft without human intervention. Even though this system was eventually completed ($55 million over budget) it didn’t work. The carts that were used to automatically transfer the bags couldn’t cope with sharp corners, sensors lost track of where bags were in the system, and more problems were present in the system.
All this caused the Denver airport to open 16 months late so that the system could be fixed and added a total of $560 million to the cost of the airport. After a couple of years, though, the system was abandoned completely. Another example is the automated fulfillment system developed for Sainsbury’s, a British supermarket. Sainsbury’s wanted a new system for its main distribution center. This barcode-based system was designed to save a huge amount of money and increase efficiency because a lot of human tasks could be automated. In the end though, the system, installed in 2003, failed because of apparent barcode-reading errors. After two years of bug fixing, Sainsbury’s wrote that the system worked as intended.In 2007,  however, the complete system was scrapped. Total write off: £150 million.

Nenhum comentário:

Postar um comentário