> In software it feels like if a project is more than 6 months old, we throw it out and rewrite it.
“The Phoenix pay system is a payroll processing system for Canadian federal government employees, provided by IBM in June 2011 using PeopleSoft software, and run by Public Services and Procurement Canada… By July 2018, Phoenix has caused pay problems to close to 80 percent of the federal government's 290,000 public servants through underpayments, over-payments, and non-payments.“
That situation was (is?) absolutely mind-boggling. I personally know government employees that were being underpaid with no recourse for months on end because the software wasn't working and the government apparently had no alternate way to pay. Some people weren't getting paid at all. And as you quoted, it affected 80% of the workforce, hundreds of thousands of people.
Ironically, many of the agile development practices which are widely used today were pioneered in the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation (C3) payroll application. It was never able to produce an accurate payroll for Chrysler and couldn't replace the legacy system, although the project was considered at least a partial success in other ways.
https://wiki.c2.com/?ChryslerComprehensiveCompensation
Someone should get fired for choosing IBM in this case
My employer still had the balls to pay IBM after the Phoenix snafu to come in and tell us how we could become more efficient and guess what? It was basically word for word what the frontline employees had been screaming for for YEARS that management ignored. And guess what? They ignore the consulting report and did nothing anyways. #MunicipalLife