Seeing off the grizzly in my OWL…

I was fortunate to spend the last week of my time in North America in Yellowstone, where I was able to knock off another item on my OWL (Outrageous Wish List) when I met up (at a safe distance) with a grizzly bear (and its 3 cubs).

In talking to my hosts about my OWL, I was, once again, made aware of the American focus almost exclusively on work, and their general lack of planning of their own personal lives. At this stage I can plug the services of Richard Maybury who, in addition to helping me manage my work activities better, taught me the need to use the same techniques in managing my personal life – one of the ideas being to build an OWL of 10-20 things that you want to do in your life – and plan to knock 1-2 items off the list each year.

OK – so I’ve only managed to knock 4 items off my OWL in the past 5 years (getting to Yellowstone and meeting a bear was one) – but having the OWL (as well as using several of other time-management techniques in my personal, as well as my work, life) has made a big difference in my life.

In the USA they talk of bucket lists instead of OWLs, but surprisingly none of the people I met out there have one – do you?

Is the FiReControl project at risk?

In today’s document outlining the new coalition government’s programme for government there is a short comment about the fire services, namely that the government will “stop plans to force regionalisation of the fire service.”

Whether this refers to the FiReControl project or Prescott’s wishes for a merging of the existing 46 English fire services into 9 regions is unclear. Personally I hope that this does not spell the end of FiReControl.

As I’ve said before, the case for FiReControl is very strong – as a nation we would have far a better response to major emergencies were an effective FiReControl system implemented. As ever, the problem is that the procurement of the technology for this project was fatally flawed from day 1 (see FiReControl – a catalogue of poor judgement and mismanagement ).

Whilst the incoming government will inevitably focus on the costs of the project, and the potential savings from cancelling the project, I hope that it doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. The current project may be flawed, but the underlying ideas and vision aren’t. If the current project is to be cancelled, let’s hope that the vision remains, and that it is taken forward more effectively and efficiently in a well-specified project with strong user engagement.

HIPs to go – at last….

OK – I predicted the demise of HIPS prematurely (see HIPS will go - but when... ) – but the new coalition government has today suspended the use of Home Information Packs (HIPs) by home sellers.

Introduced in 2007, the aim was to speed up the house selling process by obliging sellers to provide much of the required conveyancing information when properties are first put up for sale.

The packs were paid for by sellers and contained property information, title deeds, and local searches. But in practice many prospective purchasers ignored the HIP whilst making their decision, and actual purchasers resorted to getting their own local authority searches.

"Today the new government is ensuring that home information packs are history," said Housing Minister Grant Shapps.

"By suspending home information packs today, it means that home sellers will be able to get on with marketing their home without having to shell out hundreds of pounds upfront. We are committed to greener housing so from now on all that will be required will be a simple energy performance certificate" he added.

FiReControl – a catalogue of poor judgement and mismanagement

No – that title isn’t mine – it’s from Communities and Local Government (CLG) Committee Chair Dr Phyllis Starkey when launching the report of an enquiry into the FiReControl project (a programme to replace 46 local fire and rescue service control rooms with nine purpose-built regional control centres).

This will come as no surprise to regular readers who may remember my December 2008 post on this project:

“the project itself smacks of Government’s usual inability to follow best practices when procuring new IT systems….….. it has failed to involve key users in its design early enough, initially imposed a massively optimistic timescale for implementation, and seemingly failed to allow any contingencies in its plans and budgets.”

Yet again Central Government is giving us a lesson on how not to procure and implement new IT projects. Quotes from the evidence presented to the committee include:

“The problem stems again from a lack of user engagement at the early stages of the project.”

“the rush to procurement meant the level of detail in the specification did not reflect what the professional people were saying. That has plagued the project ever since, both in terms of delays and being over-optimistic about how quickly it could
be delivered, how much it was going to cost, and why certain things that were absolutely necessary were never specified and other things were put in that were not needed.”

As I have posted so many times, this is yet another project that has gone wrong before the initial contract was signed. The matter appear to have been compounded by (yet again one of my pet topics) the “adversarial relationship between the customer and contractor”. Central Government must get out of the current ways of procurement of these innovative systems:

• Government under-defines requirement
• Suppliers bid knowing that the requirements will change
• Government awards contract on the basis of price rather than value
• Government then involves end users who identify substantial changes to requirements
• (in many cases like this, initial software solution is found not to meet the new requirements)
• Suppliers use change control procedures to delay the schedule and increase the price of the contract to reflect the additional work required to meet the changes
• Contractor and Supplier fall out – to the overall detriment of the project

I have great sympathy with both the supplier’s and the CLG’s management staff on this project. They appear to have done the best they can given the framework under which Government procures these types of projects. Although I do wonder what the unsuccessful bidders for the original project said in their proposals – did they point out the likely problems, allow for them in their bids (and get ruled out because of the resulting higher price and/or delayed schedule?).

As I noted in my 2008 posts, we need this project to work – once implemented it should give us one of the best operational systems in the world. The good news is that main contractor EADS has entered into a new subcontract with Intergraph for its well-respected I/CAD product. Intergraph already appears to have stamped its authority and experience on this project and, whilst the lack of fully defined requirements so late in the project gives cause for concern, I have more confidence that they will be able to deliver a working central system than before their appointment.

P.S. You may be interested in some of my other posts on these topics:

• definition of a successful Central Government project
• Government IT projects – time for change
• a war story

Microsoft Mix 10 – designing Modern Web Apps

My current project is based around an interactive application delivered over the Internet to both full screen browsers and mobile devices with small form factors. Of key importance to the business plan is that the application be easy to use, and be capable of use by citizens who are not necessarily computer literate. (It’s also going to be delivered via Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform – but that’s another story).

As the product is being built with Microsoft tools, I’ve been up early this week watching the videos from the sessions given at Microsoft’s Mix 10 event in Las Vegas (you need to have downloaded or streamed the videos before the east coast of the US wakes up – from about midday onwards the response is very, very slow).

There is a lot about technologies not strictly relevant to my current project, but out of the Azure and Web Apps presentations I’ve seen to date, the best has been from Luke Wroblewski (not an MS employee) on the topic of Modern Web Form Design. In summary, Luke describes how to use modern web technologies/tools to deliver better end user experiences, and illustrates his talk with results from research into the end user acceptance, and use of, tools/techniques such as in-line validation, AJAX accordions and other such tools aimed at providing a better end user experience.

If, like me, you have an interest in this area (and would like to learn more about the methods to adopt in building web apps for small form factor mobile devices), then I thoroughly recommend the video (although be advised that it is over an hour long, just).

P.S. For those who want to know more about the Azure cloud computing platform at a fairly high level, then I recommend a Lap around the Windows Azure platform (although, yet again, this is about an hour long). This demonstrates the ease with which apps can be deployed to the cloud – although I can’t believe it’s as easy as the demo……

How to split large Government IT projects

I’ve been intrigued by the debate on large Government projects and the use of the larger service suppliers that has been prompted by the Conservative Technology manifesto. Some rush to the defence of the larger suppliers, whilst others, typically coming from the SME sector like me, point to the way the current procurement process fails to include SME’s adequately.

My experience of working as potential subcontractors to the big service suppliers is that even though you may have a market-leading software solution, they will try to find a way to prove that the end customer will be better off with a customised solution built, typically from scratch, with lots of chargeable days from the main contractor, rather than making use of an SME solution. And how many software package selections do main contractors make on the basis of the amount of services required from the main contractor to implement the solution (rather than possibly a better/cheaper solution that doesn’t involve oodles of services from the main contractor)?

These large services companies are in these large projects to generate services revenue for themselves, maximise their margins, and to make money for themselves - not their subcontractors – who they will use only when they really need to – and typically then only with loads of chargeable time from the main contractor to oversee the subcontract procurement and subsequent management of the implementation project.

But why would we expect otherwise – it costs a great deal to bid for Government work, and once it’s won, who would expect the supplier to do anything else. No – the problem lies in the way Government structures, procures and manages these projects, not the way the big services companies work.

Even with the Conservatives’ proposed limit of £100M on IT projects, the projects are likely to fall outside the types of project that SMEs can bid for directly. Central government needs to change the way that it structures larger deals, and uses the larger services suppliers to oversee them. Yes, use a main contractor in a management role or responsible for integration, but making it clear how far that role goes, and in particular that whoever manages the procurement and oversees the project cannot fulfil any of the other roles. Why not set a minimum percentage of the project value that must be spent with SME subcontractors?

More importantly, split the application software development out into separate projects from the implementation and roll out (and have separate infrastructure supply and support projects). For major new developments, fund two or three SMEs to develop software in competition, keeping the best solution but being prepared to throw away one or more developed solutions before the cost of implementation and roll out – even though the developments have been paid for. Get experienced software developers involved sooner, and in touch with the end users to develop software that really meets their needs.

Let’s get a contractual framework where the main contractors are focused less on where their own services revenue will come from, and more on how to provide the best solution for the customer.

P.S. The Conservative plan for a small in-house ‘skunkworks’ team, to develop low cost applications and advise on the procurement of larger projects seems like step in the right direction. But will Government be able to recruit the appropriate resources – with all due respect to the IT civil servants I’ve met, in most cases, they are not the types of staff that will be the best for this new role. As noted above, why not make use of those staff in SMEs, calling on a much wider pool of experience, and in many cases with experience relevant to the specific project in mind…..

Fraudulent misrepresentation – what now?

There has been a lot of press comment over the past week about the recent Court ruling that HP/EDS must pay damages (“in excess of £200M”) to BSkyB for a failed CRM system. Surprisingly, much of this comment seems to suggest that this case will result in significant changes to the ways that IT suppliers will sell and contract in the future.

Yet the basis of the Court decision is that HP/EDS was guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation, and that HP/EDS could not rely on its ‘limit of liability’ clause to limit he amount of damages it had to pay to BSkyB. But this is neither a change to contract law – nor a new interpretation – under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (UCTA) suppliers have always been unable to exclude fraudulent misrepresentation, and under UCTA they cannot limit liability for such fraud.

What are surprises are the size of the likely damages (several times the value of the original contract), the apparently blatant misrepresentation carried out, and that the case ever came to court (it most similar cases there is an out of court settlement – note that in this case HP/EDS is rumoured to have spent over £40M in legal fees to date – suggesting that, yet again, the real winners in such cases are the legal eagles).

Hopefully, this case will serve as a wake-up call to Directors and senior managers to revisit their own internal procedures, training and guidance to all their customer-facing staff – and not just their sales staff (although they are the main concern), as it is just as likely that pre-sales staff, consultants and/or other staff could misrepresent the capabilities of a system being proposed to a prospect.

Most importantly, in addition to the proposal/tender vetting process, the contractual negotiation phase must be used by a supplier to fully vet its own proposal, collecting together any documentation and/or ‘side letters’, to try to avoid any prospect from relying on any statements that could be false. When I used to negotiate larger contracts I always openly asked the customer if there were any statements, email or documents that he was relying upon – and if so I insisted that they were referenced or included in the contract.

As I have said many times before, from my own experience gained in trying to turn around problem projects – as clearly happened in this BSkyB project - most failed projects have gone wrong before the contract is signed….