3 ms·

TOC seems to conveniently leave out risk as a factor too. At least at the sales level. And yet the amount of failed systems migrations I've seen... If I have a

• teh_klev 7y ago
  I've seen some spectacular cockups over the years and eye watering sums of money burned because no-one factored in risk properly. And they more often than not happen on government projects, and usually some big name consultancy is heavily involved - Capita, PwC et-al.
  • ethbro 7y ago
    Having worked the consultant gig for a bit, we never talked about risk. Honestly, because most customers sponsoring projects were morons. If you told them there was a 25% chance of failure, they'd go with someone else who claimed a 0% chance of failure. I finally decided most of this was just sponsors covering their ass. If they initiated a project with risk and it failed, that reflected on them. If they initiated a project and the consultants claimed (winkwinknudgenudge) there's no risk, then if it failed those lying consultants were the only ones to blame.
    • supercanuck 7y ago
      This is pretty much the reason consultants exist. They are the employee's risk insurance.
    • pergadad 7y ago
      Or just not the right expertise to launch and manage such a contract. Sadly really difficult for government to hire the right expertise - either hiring procedures are too complicated (equitable!) or slow (thorough!) or not interested (salaries not competitive as citizens would be outraged about gov paying high salaries for high expertise).