An attempted reorganization of the fire service by the last government cost nearly £500m and was one of the worst cases of project failure MPs have ever seen, according to a highly critical report published on Tuesday by the all-party Commons public accounts committee (PAC). It warns that finally getting the system working properly is likely to cost an additional £85m.
You can bet your bottom dollar that this project had more 'method' than you can shake a stick at.
The project's development was heavily reliant on advice from PA Consulting, whose services alone cost £42m.
That's a whole of expensive advice on how to run a big project, and yet...
The scheme was terminated last December with no objectives achieved and at least £469m wasted, the MPs say.
What happened?
Judging by the rest of the article, the people who commissioned the system suffered a £500m knee-jerk reaction in the post-9/11 gestalt, and the people who built it followed their process, which resulted in a massive overspend with no delivery at the end. In other words, the commissioners reacted instead of thinking, and the implementors executed their methods rather than thinking.
Most processes have a feasibility study phase, but the report says the project was pushed ahead without undertaking any feasibility checks. What is really frightening is that no-one questioned its feasibility during the subsequent years, even as the budget escalated. That is the downside of methods and processes. Once they're engaged, rational thought outside the box becomes difficult and anyone who says, 'hey, wait a minute...' is going to be swiftly side-lined or dropped from the project. Active thought is actively discouraged.
Industry gurus react to problems like this by instituting more method and more standardization that constrains critical thinking, rather than arguing for more up-front thinking before anyone goes anywhere near a method. The result is a growing fixation with style over substance, and a £500m failure of Woo! to deliver.
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