At 10:55 13/04/2005, you wrote:
From what I understand INCIS was a failure due to poor project management and "Scope Creep", INCIS is also not the first failure the government has produced and will not be the last. Several studies also firmly pointed the blame finger back at the government on it.
There is ample material available (publicly) that discusses the INCIS situation in comprehensive detail. Have you read the report of the Ministerial Inquiry into INCIS? For those who are interested, you can access the PDF report here: http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2000/incis_rpt/INCIS%20inquiry.pdf or the HTML report here: http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2000/incis_rpt/index.html A response to your statement "... INCIS was a failure due to poor project management and 'Scope Creep'" is found in the Executive Summary: "The reasons why the INCIS Project did not achieve its objectives were numerous, interrelated and complex but they were not unique to the Police and there were other examples both in Government and private enterprise business in New Zealand and overseas. No single cause resulted in the failure but the combined effect of the causes meant that INCIS would almost certainly fail." -- Executive Summary, http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2000/incis_rpt/exsummary.html However, if you contrast the Executive Summary with part of the Relationship with Primary Contractor exposition, it is easy to understand why the project was doomed from the outset: "IBM appears to have accepted and proceeded within the limits of the technology and architecture specified in the Request for Tender (RFT) and Request for Proposal (RFP). However, in particular, having regard to the Sapphire report, it is reasonable to assume that IBM should have known that key elements of the technology and architecture were unproven in an application of this size and complexity. The Sapphire report indicates that IBM advised that a distributed object computing environment was impossible to achieve and admitted that, in respect of its Object Oriented Iterative Development Methodology, it had very little practical experience on any project, let alone one the size and complexity of the INCIS Project. IBM was also unable to demonstrate the process manager." -- Section 8.2, http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2000/incis_rpt/relationship.html Perhaps IBM assume that practical experience is an unnecessary or unrelated qualifier when attempting a complex project? I have personally been involved in a project where IBM was also the Primary Contractor and where things turned pear-shaped. In that case that project was abandoned after it had been running for ~20 months. Perhaps I have become cynical? However when it comes to complex projects, cynicism saves a good deal of money when compared to optimism, and truck-loads full of cash when compared to blind optimism. David.