Richard mentioned in passing:
> 1) We can't guarantee that expertise - or claimed expertise - equals good
> decision making. The famous Westpac CS87 etc debacles of a decade ago were
> conceived by experts.
Actually Westpac's CS90 debacle is a good example of Australian management
incompetence. They blew $125 million on it in the end. But it wasn't run by
experts.
In the late '80s and early to mid 90's there was a fad in business, eagerly
reported by BRW every few months and taught at management schools, that IT
projects were best managed by "business experts" and marketing departments,
who of course knew more about IT than the "IT department." CS90 was one such
project.
By the mid 90's, managing directors had started to realise that projects run
by business geniuses never worked, were hated by users, overran their
budgets enormously and so on, and they finally started appointing expert
technologists to run projects.
- tony
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