Guest View: It's Not Too Late to Learn
By James Shore
August 15, 2005 —
(Page 1 of 4)
On Feb. 3, 2005, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, appeared before a Senate subcommittee to explain how the FBI had managed to waste US$104.5 million.
This couldn’t have been a very comfortable position to be in.
In 2001, the FBI had launched the Trilogy project, a project designed to update the FBI’s IT infrastructure.
Trilogy came in three parts: update the network, update the hardware and update the software. Guess which one Robert Mueller was talking about?
That’s right—the software. “Virtual Case File,” or VCF, was intended to allow FBI agents to upload information to a centralized database so that it could be easily accessed by others.
It was a disaster, and the $170 million project was canceled for a loss of $104.5 million.
Sadly, the loss was entirely avoidable: The FBI made many classic mistakes. In this article, I’ll take a look at three of these mistakes and apply lessons learned from the agile software movement.
Classic Mistake No. 1: Ignoring the Users. User involvement is a critical factor in the success of software projects.
In its 2004 CHAOS report, the Standish Group cites user involvement as the top project success factor, and lack of user input as the top cause of project problems. Despite this, there is no indication that the FBI made the involvement of actual agents a priority in VCF development.
In agile projects, user involvement is a central concern.
Many agile projects have an “on-site customer”—a user representative who is directly responsible for picking priorities and defining features. Agile teams produce working software every month (or even every week) for demonstrations and user review. They recruit outside customers to regularly review these releases and provide feedback.
User involvement isn’t easy. At the March meeting of the Portland Software Development Roundtable, a participant described a government project for the state of Oregon. For several periods of six months, different groups of seven to eight users were physically moved to the capitol in order to work out detailed requirements. Larger user groups did extensive testing and review close to each release.
Share this link: http://sdt.bz/28788
Most Read
Latest News
Resources
SAP unveils SAP HANA platform innovations for Big Data and spatial processing
Features include smart data access and expanded cloud deployment options
|
|
|
Alteryx raises $12 million to put Big Data analytics in the hands of all business analysts
Quest founder's firm, Toba Capital, selects Alteryx as its first analytics investment
|
|
|
Google I/O kicks off
Developers get new APIs and tools, and the Go language hits version 1.1
|
|
|
Jelastic launches new version of its Java and PHP hosting platform
Jelastic today announced the launch of a new version of its ultra-scalable cloud hosting platform
|
CollabNet fuses CloudForge, TeamForge
New pricing structure and integration gives developers an enterprise-grade choice for dist...
|
|
|
Eclipse release train for Kepler arrives June 26
New version of Eclipse includes Stardust for business process management, and Orion 3.0 fo...
|
|
|
Google I/O kicks off
Developers get new APIs and tools, and the Go language hits version 1.1
|
|
|
Enterprises going mobile get first ALM platform
Solstice Mobile releases AppLauncher for native app development and deployment on multiple...
|
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Testing and ASQ SaaS
Demand for solutions to test applications on the cloud and for the cloud is rising signifi...
|
|
|
Get to Know the Database Decision Factors
What should you look for when choosing a relational database system? This informative arti...
|
|
|
Exploring the Database Forest
Today’s database technology landscape is more dynamic and varied than ever before. What’s...
|
|
|
Data Management Resource Guide
Today’s data is generated by more than just applications. Data is generated by trillions o...
|