Hugh

At least you have a grasp on reality...

"Yadda yadda yadda" is what lead to the NHS IT fiasco.

No, we approached it with an attitude "what is it we are trying to and how do we make it work’.

I have delivered all my programmes except two -

The first one was an example of your "yadda yadda yadda’ approach - the Board told the City that the new Banking systems would be live for a certain date, even though the Suppliers and IT had shown, no matter what we did, it would be six months after that (with sufficiently complex systems, you can’t just throw resources at it - there are developmental stage gates that you have to go through in certain sequences) - we delivered on time, but the systems crashed almost immediately because there hadn’t been time to undertake full integration and end-user testing; this meant the company couldn’t do business for three weeks (which is a bit of a bugger if you are a £3 billion a year turnover Financial Services Company). We managed to get something up and running after three weeks, but it took nearly a year before things were running smoothly (it mean working long hours and most weekends for nearly a year for most of the Programme and IT teams; not something I would recommend for efficiency and accuracy.) btw, that company no longer exists...

The second programme was one I took over, and it had been running for 5 years and still hadn’t delivered - I reviewed it, and found it had started with no agreed requirements, no business ownership, and senior management who said "just do it" but couldn’t agree what "lt" was beyond a very high level concept (sound familiar?). I recommended that we kill it, as there were still no agreed requirements (the poor developers were visited each week and given requirements, with no change control, which often contradicted the previous ones). Because this was a "political" "just do it" Programme (someone very high in the organisation had had an "brilliant idea", and got his lackies to get it started (and then lost interest), so I couldn’t just cancel it. I proposed a remedial plan, which stopped all the changes, and proposed an independent review at the year end, by an outside consultancy with expertise in that area). At the year end, they found it was not recoverable, and proposed shutting it down.

However, I have successfully implemented many major complex systems, including what was the largest Data Warehouse programme in Europe at the time (which took 4 years), a major SAP implementation (which took 3 years), and the complete refurbishment of a Head Office and 450 Branch Offices IT Infrastructure, including Business Continuity. I have run large technology programmes and departments (500+ staff and £100+ million budgets), and been an IT Director and a member of the Google Europe CIO Group - what’s your Technology delivery background?

These things aren’t easy, these things aren’t simple, and anyone who thinks they are is suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect.