About 15 years ago, I became a full time employee of the Canadian Government. I was part of a team that was rebuilding a pretty huge and critical system. It was a disaster. I left after a year. The gun registry before it and the Phoenix pay system since, and many other failures in between..it seems pretty hopeless.
I initially put all of the blame on the expensive consultants, that were doing most of the work, for being technically awful (writing software like Fowler's Analysis Pattern book was a holy grail).
While I still think they bear the brunt of the blame, in retrospect everything was awful. The project was both a business and technical transformation at once. There were too many managers, too many business experts and overall poor leadership. Rather than breaking it down into manageable chunks, it just kept growing and growing. There was no concern or accountability for waste.
Sometimes replacing a legacy system with a new system is difficult. But most of the time, it can be done as a slow and steady transition...so long as egos and ambitions stay out of it.
I initially put all of the blame on the expensive consultants, that were doing most of the work, for being technically awful (writing software like Fowler's Analysis Pattern book was a holy grail).
While I still think they bear the brunt of the blame, in retrospect everything was awful. The project was both a business and technical transformation at once. There were too many managers, too many business experts and overall poor leadership. Rather than breaking it down into manageable chunks, it just kept growing and growing. There was no concern or accountability for waste.
Sometimes replacing a legacy system with a new system is difficult. But most of the time, it can be done as a slow and steady transition...so long as egos and ambitions stay out of it.