Ford Motor Company's ambitious effort to write new software for buying supplies. Begun in 2000, the goal of the project, code-named Everest, was to replace Ford's patchwork of internal purchasing systems with a uniform system that would run over the Internet. The new software was supposed to reduce paperwork, speed orders and slash costs. But the effort sank under its own complexity. When it was rolled out for testing in North America, suppliers rebelled; according to Automotive News, many found the new software to be slower and more cumbersome than the programs it was intended to replace. Last August, Ford abandoned Everest amid reports that the project was as much as $200 million over budget. Federal Bureau of Investigation after spending $170 million to create a program that would give agents ready access to information on suspected terrorists, the bureau admitted last week that it's not even close to having a working system. In fact, it may have to start from scratch.

A McDonald's program called Innovate was even more ambitious - and expensive. Started in 1999 with a budget of $1 billion, the network sought to automate pretty much the entire fast-food empire. Software systems would collect information from every restaurant - the number of burgers sold, the speed of customer service, even the temperature of the oil in the French fry vats - and deliver it in a neat bundle to the company's executives, who would be able to adjust operations moment by moment. Or so it was promised. Despite the grand goals, the project went nowhere. In late 2002, McDonald's killed it, writing off the $170 million that had already been spent.

Lloyd's of London has pulled the plug on a big, expensive, and now embarrassing software project. Launched five years ago, the effort was aimed at modernizing the venerable insurance group's brokering processes and making them "paperless." But the new system never enticed users to actually use it - the cure turned out to be worse than the disease. Lloyd's ended up wasting 70 million pounds - about $125 million - on the project

According to Roughtype, There are three lessons here. First is that the bigger the software project, the more likely it is to collapse under its own weight. $100 million seems like the line beyond which failure is almost assured. Second is that you should always create software to solve the day-to-day problems faced by the actual users, not to meet big abstract organizational challenges. Solve enough little problems, and the big ones take care of themselves. Fail to make users' lives easier, and they'll simply bypass the system (and never trust anything you do ever again). Third and finally, you should never give a software project a catchy codename.

Source: 1, 2Prashanth RaiTag(s):IT, large+projects