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https://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/slaughter-and-may/ https://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/slaughter-and-may/ - The bank has commissioned an independent report

https://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/slaughter-and-may/ https://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/slaughter-and-may/ - The bank has commissioned an independent report https://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/slaughter-and-may/slaughter-and-may-report.pdf https://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/slaughter-and-may/slaugh... - the report itself Interesting notes from the summary: * Functional testing took 17 months, and began very late due to project delays. * The board was told that there were only 800 bugs, and yet the independent review found that there were more like 2000 * Non-functional testing seems to be rushed * the Sabadell COO reported SABIS, one of its child companies and major IT contractor in the migration doesn't have the capacity to respond and solve incidents after go-live And the TSB board decided to Go Live anyway. Looks like a classic IT failure story - project is late, save costs on operations, get tired of testing and fixing and decide that it is good enough to be released. But also some very weird incentives - SABIS was apparently not the best vendor for the job, but they are a part of Sabadell, the bank that bough TSB. Looking at the "Integrated Master Plan" Gantt chart of the project on page 44 is Waterfall as hell and they still failed to plan for Non-functional testing. These some first impressions, it looks like a interesting read.

alecco 7y ago
In UK/EU banking the way to get promoted is to be a yes man. Business has complete control and abhors IT. Impossible deadlines and hands-off approach make atrocious code bases. And this becomes a never ending feedback loop going on for decades. There’s never time to pay for technical debt. And now with the replacement of commercial staff for IT staff there’s a growing divide. Stay away.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- drcross 7y ago
  I have experience of this and can confirm. Banking is not a sector for young smart people because it will wear you down. It's a constant battle of change approval boards, fighting their risk adverse fear of causing service distribution while at the same time expecting things to be delivered. Save these types of roles for when you are old and want a boring job.
  - blowski 7y ago
    Unfortunately, the "finance is only for old and boring people" also leads to a certain prestige for finance - startups are for kids, finance is for adults. Many in finance almost pride themselves on how much time they spend in meetings, and how long it takes to release anything. For startups, the myth is that success comes from a "move fast and break things" culture, so they wear IT disasters with a badge of honour. In finance, it's the opposite - with enough planning and governance, huge budgets, and long timelines, they believe you can guarantee success on any project.
    - UK-Al05 7y ago
      The culture is don't make changes at any cost. As a result you don't make many changes, and as a result you're bad at them. Modern technology companies make tons of changes all of the time. As a result they become good at them. Looking at the reports they learned EXACTLY the wrong lessons. It's not to make fewer changes, it's to become good at changes.
      - xgb84j 7y ago
        It's also the risk distribution of one large vs. many small changes that heavily favors many small changes.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        > Modern technology companies make tons of changes all of the time. As a result they become good at them. Really? That hasn't been my experience. Nearly every time some moderately large update to any modern software goes out it seems to break a bunch things. What it doesn't break it usually just ditches entirely.
        UK-Al05 7y ago
        The trick is not to have large updates... Move a bit at time.
        7y ago
- bhouston 7y ago
  My theory is that the code never gets fixed in these pathological companies. They just get higher costs until people switch away to a bank that is more efficient.
- devonkim 7y ago
  You could replace banking with any other large enterprise vertical like healthcare, telecom, government and be very correct. The problem is that IT is a cost center, and cost centers are as a rule terrible to work in regardless of industry, even if you're at a tech company.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    Very true. Work somewhere where the CEO has some level of understanding and appreciation for your work and life will be much better. Corporate IT is an especially bad place. You can only lose. When things go well they start cutting costs by letting people go and offshoring jobs. And when things go badly you get the blame. The IT department at my company is hard to work with and often drive me crazy. But when I look at their structure it’s obvious that it doesn’t allow for people to a good job.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  I think that’s especially common in regulated industries. On the one hand top management are afraid of compliance issues but on the other hand they don’t understand and respect why things cost money and time. So they are very susceptible to hiring sweet talking people who pretend to be able to solve this.
Aeolun 7y ago
> * The board was told that there were only 800 bugs, and yet the independent review found that there were more like 2000 If there were only 2000 bugs in a full bank migration, they were doing pretty well. Our fairly small single page app is going on 300 now after some 5 weeks of testing.
- adjkant 7y ago
  It sounds to me like there were 2000 reported bugs. You likely had better coverage due to smaller scope.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  The number alone is meaningless. Some bugs are UX inconveniences, while others can destroy data, as we saw in this case. The real problem at these banks is the multitude of systems and datafeeds that impact systems downstream a hundred systems long. The real solution to these big project failures is, in my experience, the phase deployments. With the first step being retiring old systems and consolidating data repositories to reduce knock-on effects.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    I thought the same, but then figured the ratio is probably around the same.

alecco 7y ago

In UK/EU banking the way to get promoted is to be a yes man. Business has complete control and abhors IT. Impossible deadlines and hands-off approach make atrocious code bases. And this becomes a never ending feedback loop going on for decades. There’s never time to pay for technical debt. And now with the replacement of commercial staff for IT staff there’s a growing divide. Stay away.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
drcross 7y ago
I have experience of this and can confirm. Banking is not a sector for young smart people because it will wear you down. It's a constant battle of change approval boards, fighting their risk adverse fear of causing service distribution while at the same time expecting things to be delivered. Save these types of roles for when you are old and want a boring job.
- blowski 7y ago
  Unfortunately, the "finance is only for old and boring people" also leads to a certain prestige for finance - startups are for kids, finance is for adults. Many in finance almost pride themselves on how much time they spend in meetings, and how long it takes to release anything. For startups, the myth is that success comes from a "move fast and break things" culture, so they wear IT disasters with a badge of honour. In finance, it's the opposite - with enough planning and governance, huge budgets, and long timelines, they believe you can guarantee success on any project.
  - UK-Al05 7y ago
    The culture is don't make changes at any cost. As a result you don't make many changes, and as a result you're bad at them. Modern technology companies make tons of changes all of the time. As a result they become good at them. Looking at the reports they learned EXACTLY the wrong lessons. It's not to make fewer changes, it's to become good at changes.
    - xgb84j 7y ago
      It's also the risk distribution of one large vs. many small changes that heavily favors many small changes.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      > Modern technology companies make tons of changes all of the time. As a result they become good at them. Really? That hasn't been my experience. Nearly every time some moderately large update to any modern software goes out it seems to break a bunch things. What it doesn't break it usually just ditches entirely.
      - UK-Al05 7y ago
        The trick is not to have large updates... Move a bit at time.
        7y ago
bhouston 7y ago
My theory is that the code never gets fixed in these pathological companies. They just get higher costs until people switch away to a bank that is more efficient.
devonkim 7y ago
You could replace banking with any other large enterprise vertical like healthcare, telecom, government and be very correct. The problem is that IT is a cost center, and cost centers are as a rule terrible to work in regardless of industry, even if you're at a tech company.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Very true. Work somewhere where the CEO has some level of understanding and appreciation for your work and life will be much better. Corporate IT is an especially bad place. You can only lose. When things go well they start cutting costs by letting people go and offshoring jobs. And when things go badly you get the blame. The IT department at my company is hard to work with and often drive me crazy. But when I look at their structure it’s obvious that it doesn’t allow for people to a good job.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I think that’s especially common in regulated industries. On the one hand top management are afraid of compliance issues but on the other hand they don’t understand and respect why things cost money and time. So they are very susceptible to hiring sweet talking people who pretend to be able to solve this.

Aeolun 7y ago

> * The board was told that there were only 800 bugs, and yet the independent review found that there were more like 2000 If there were only 2000 bugs in a full bank migration, they were doing pretty well. Our fairly small single page app is going on 300 now after some 5 weeks of testing.

adjkant 7y ago
It sounds to me like there were 2000 reported bugs. You likely had better coverage due to smaller scope.
koheripbal 7y ago
The number alone is meaningless. Some bugs are UX inconveniences, while others can destroy data, as we saw in this case. The real problem at these banks is the multitude of systems and datafeeds that impact systems downstream a hundred systems long. The real solution to these big project failures is, in my experience, the phase deployments. With the first step being retiring old systems and consolidating data repositories to reduce knock-on effects.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  I thought the same, but then figured the ratio is probably around the same.