In a recent article in Computer Weekly by Tony Collins 

Defra defends Accenture over “flawed” £350m IT system (excerpts below) there are clear examples why a process based approach to capture requirements are the ONLY way to make sure that the system you develop will meet the business need

 

Defra is a Government agency, and UK Government hits the headlines regularly with failed IT systems.  This is another painful, no pitiful example, or taxpayers money being flushed away.

 

But it could be so much simpler. Use a rigorous process mamangement tool to map the requirements as a series of end to end processes, attach supporting information and then give that to Accenture to build a system.

 

For more information read how ING Bank used this approach successful  or read Common Approach, Uncommon Results. Read the summary. If you like it I'll send yo a copy of the book.

 

So if it is so much better approach, why didn't Accenture recommend they work this way? Simple.  Do what the client wants  in the way that they want it and even if iit goes wrong they will pay you and defend you......

 

Read the article and weep.

Defra defends Accenture over “flawed” £350m IT system

Top civil servants have defended Accenture after it helped to deliver a "fundamentally flawed" £350m IT system to pay EU subsidies to farmers.

Helen Ghosh, permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), told MPs yesterday: "The people responsible for the fact that the IT system was not as good as it should have been were the people who commissioned it as much as Accenture."

The defence of Accenture came when the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee (PAC) met to question Ghosh and Tony Cooper, chief executive of the Rural Payments Agency, on the Single Payment Scheme.

Labour MP Alan Williams asked Ghosh and Cooper whether Accenture should pay compensation for a disastrous system that pays subsidies to farmers under the Single Payment Scheme.
ADVERTISEMENT

Cooper said that officials had so poorly specified the system that it had no facility for changing the entitlements for each farmer.

Statements are sent to farmers each year which set out the amounts they are entitled to. The rates in 2009 are higher than 2008 entitlements.

Cooper said that something "pretty fundamental was missing from the original specification".

He added: "When the system was delivered out of the change programme in 2005/6 it did not include the functionality to be able to change entitlement or to transfer entitlements, and that is a fundamental aspect of the scheme. We therefore had to invest to retrofit that functionality into the system."

Ghosh, who as head of Defra has overall responsibility for the Rural Payments Agency, said that one main problem with the IT was that Accenture delivered what it was asked to deliver. "What they [Accenture] were asked to deliver was the wrong thing."

full article
 

Comments from the following blog entry: http://www.mwdadvisors.com/blog/2009/10/links-for-2009-10-28.html