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IEEE Spectrum had a great series of interactive information graphics on 'Lessons from a decade of IT failures' [0]. In particular, "The Staggering Impact of IT

by jamessb 11y ago

IEEE Spectrum had a great series of interactive information graphics on 'Lessons from a decade of IT failures' [0]. In particular, "The Staggering Impact of IT Systems Gone Wrong" [1] and "Monuments to failure" [2] are good lists of failures, many of which are not included on Wikipedia's list. [0]: http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/lessons-from-a-decade-of-it-failures http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/lessons-from-a-decade-of-it-... [1]: http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-staggering-impact-of-it-systems-gone-wrong http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-staggering-impact-of-it-... [2]: http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/monuments-to-failure http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/monuments-to-failure

thrownaway2424 11y ago
I don't know if those are all in the same category. For example the Army cancelled Future Combat System because it didn't work. Would the project have been considered a "success" if they had put it into production instead? For my money, a real failure is like the giant BART fiasco in the 90s where they spent 80 million dollars on a new train control system that simply never existed, at all. They had to sue General Electric to get their money back.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  > I don't know if those are all in the same category. For example the Army cancelled Future Combat System because it didn't work. Would the project have been considered a "success" if they had put it into production instead? If it didn't work? Hopefully not. But military stuff is a bit different. Military systems tend to try to push the state of the art as far as possible, for as much edge in combat as possible. That makes for much higher chances of failure.