Farm subsidy I.T. fiasco

[TDYER63]

19 minutes ago, phart said:

I use dude as part of my vernacular. However I never put any faith in absolute statements or their makers. The judgements of absolutists mean nothing at all.

Calmac is the boards doxxer extraordinaire.

Looks like loads of over-paid under-talented arseholes arguing about who is the best, rather than getting on with the job. This would be my judgement after spending 6 minutes reading about it.

I make an exception for the highly intelligent and ageing hippies. 

[Scunnered]

33 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

However instead of taking it as such and having a wee laughing emoticon as a response Scunnered decided to reply in a serious sensible tone clearly realising that Calmac has in this instance given him some sort of validation for his hatred of the SNP and did not in any way want any deflections from that.

Please.  I have absolutely no interest in this IT system or the failings behind it, never mind whose fault it is.  I only got involved in the thread as the usual suspects who have never had an original thought in their life went into ultra defence mode.

The only validation that Calmac has given me in this instance is that you're an idiot...  But that's not exactly a secret.

 

 

Edited May 26, 2016 by Scunnered

[Scunnered]

12 minutes ago, TDYER63 said:

I make an exception for the highly intelligent and ageing hippies. 

I also use dude

[Parklife]

32 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

Then his boyfriend jumped on board with a post which appears to all and sundry as if he has been desperate to get a dig in at me.

 

 

It appeared that way to "all and sundry"? Or did it really only appear that way to you? If i wanted to have a go at you, then i would've done so. I was more just passing comment on the lack of objectivity from many SNP supporters on here.

Don't be so paranoid  

[Ally Bongo]

3 minutes ago, Scunnered said:

The only validation that Calmac has given me in this instance is that you're an idiot...  But that's not exactly a secret.

 

 

Touch a raw nerve did i ?

[Scunnered]

Just now, Ally Bongo said:

Touch a raw nerve did i ?

I don't even think you, Antidote and Ersatz Thistle combined into some kind of ultra nat could ruin my gloriously good mood today

[TDYER63]

9 minutes ago, Scunnered said:

I also use dude

Oh, ok then. I make an exception for the highly intelligent, ageing hippies and folk who like peanut butter and cats. 

[Scunnered]

1 minute ago, TDYER63 said:

Oh, ok then. I make an exception for the highly intelligent, ageing hippies and folk who like peanut butter and cats. 

Our cat is unaffectionately known as "bästard cat" 

Edited May 26, 2016 by Scunnered

[TDYER63]

2 minutes ago, Scunnered said:

Our cat is unaffectionately known as "bästard cat" 

I will add 'illegitimate' cats to the list.

Infact, lets just add everyone except Parklife ?

[Scunnered]

Just now, TDYER63 said:

Infact, lets just add everyone except Parklife ?

I like Parklife .

[thplinth]

2 hours ago, Auld_Reekie said:

End result is the same - SNP will look like idiots. Worrying if that is replicated across other Scottish Government departments.

Yeah but who really cares. As pointed out the exact same thing happened in England and they were even worse as they just ditched the IT system and went back to paper systems (versus online). Did you even know that until this thread moaning about it in Scotland? No because it is not that interesting. How much of a shit do people care in England now that it already happened? Anyone anywhere even talking about it anymore. IT projects are very prone to going wrong. This one went wrong. Yeah not ideal but apart from the farmers getting money late I don't see much of a shit being given in the wider public. The media of course will try to blow it up as it is the SNP in Scotland but they do this every chance they get so what can you do. 

Plus The Express seemed to be reporting that the mess in England was more to blame on the civil servants. So I would imagine the same will be true of Scotland. So might be a good opportunity to get rid of one or two of the more arseholish senior civil servants if that proves to be the case.

The SNP might be better going down the same road as England and just ditching the IT project to avoid the fines. Anyway it is all rather boring.

The CAP is a massive pile of steaming shit by the way and partly we are in this mess because it is so fecking complicated to administer. 

[phart]

It's not too boring considering the size of the fines. Also an insight into the efficacy of the civil service.

[Ally Bongo]

Deadline extended to October

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-36482045

[RenfrewBlue]

From what I've heard from folk working on the project Calmac is correct.

It's a classic case of contracting out the IT services to companies with no pain/gain relationship. It's just cash as long as the project runs. They've got little interest in completing the project as the contract payments are based on it.

Add to that folk managing them basically don't understand how IT projects work and you're stuffed. Seen it dozens of times over the years.

I've recently been fighting against similar idiocy in my own job with limited success. 

When your IT Director leaves and the company puts someone with zero IT knowledge into the role it kind of shows why things go wrong.

[GogsinBerkshire`]

On 5/25/2016 at 2:18 PM, Jie Bie said:

I've been working in IT since 2003, and I've seen what is described above happening time and time again.  Too many projects end up completely rudderless with everyone blaming each other once the money has run out and not even half of the system is complete!  The worst of it is that it is completely avoidable, but no senior manager wants to hear about investing time and money developing a detailed requirements specification and low-level design, they just want project teams to "get on with it and get it built".

I totally agree about the rudderless/blame game, however not about the detailed requirements spec.

Almost every project I've seen with detailed requirements/design docs up front take much longer to complete & has so much waste it's unbelievable - mainly this problem stems from users/stakeholders not knowing in detail what they really want.

Most good projects now have high-level design/requirements up front & this is broken down into more detailed requirements that go onto a backlog & are delivered to the end-user as quickly as possible - this way feedback is given repeatedly & this informs future requirements so the users/stakeholders get what they want, quicker. 

I almost went to work on the AFRC project but didn't on the recommendation from someone I trust who'd worked there & said it was a basket case. I did some work on another Scottish Gov project though & it was one of the best projects I've ever worked on. We had motivated, highly skilled & empowered teams who worked really well together & we delivered a good product on time.

 

 

 

[antidote]

1 hour ago, GogsinBerkshire` said:

I totally agree about the rudderless/blame game, however not about the detailed requirements spec.

Almost every project I've seen with detailed requirements/design docs up front take much longer to complete & has so much waste it's unbelievable - mainly this problem stems from users/stakeholders not knowing in detail what they really want.

Most good projects now have high-level design/requirements up front & this is broken down into more detailed requirements that go onto a backlog & are delivered to the end-user as quickly as possible - this way feedback is given repeatedly & this informs future requirements so the users/stakeholders get what they want, quicker. 

I almost went to work on the AFRC project but didn't on the recommendation from someone I trust who'd worked there & said it was a basket case. I did some work on another Scottish Gov project though & it was one of the best projects I've ever worked on. We had motivated, highly skilled & empowered teams who worked really well together & we delivered a good product on time.

 

 

 

Not the sort of thing the Britnats on here want to hear.

Good unbiased thinking comment. Unlike many others on here.

[antidote]

On 5/26/2016 at 2:40 PM, Ally Bongo said:

Touch a raw nerve did i ?

Not only that, you'll also notice that diversion and insults are out in abundance as per.

[antidote]

On 5/26/2016 at 9:11 AM, Scunnered said:

I miss so much him :(.  He's worth 1,617,989 Ersatz Thistles and Antidotes

So says someone who takes the high ground at the bottom of an open cast pit. 

[RenfrewBlue]

4 hours ago, GogsinBerkshire` said:

I totally agree about the rudderless/blame game, however not about the detailed requirements spec.

Almost every project I've seen with detailed requirements/design docs up front take much longer to complete & has so much waste it's unbelievable - mainly this problem stems from users/stakeholders not knowing in detail what they really want.

Most good projects now have high-level design/requirements up front & this is broken down into more detailed requirements that go onto a backlog & are delivered to the end-user as quickly as possible - this way feedback is given repeatedly & this informs future requirements so the users/stakeholders get what they want, quicker. 

I almost went to work on the AFRC project but didn't on the recommendation from someone I trust who'd worked there & said it was a basket case. I did some work on another Scottish Gov project though & it was one of the best projects I've ever worked on. We had motivated, highly skilled & empowered teams who worked really well together & we delivered a good product on time.

 

 

 

You're talking about a More agile approach. The success of that is really dependant on the Business users being heavily involved and knowing what they want.

That doesn't work for us and a lot of government departments as they're just not mature enough to fulfil their roles effectively. 

A really good Business Analyst is worth their weight in gold if your business is struggling with describing what they want. They can really drag the data out of them.

Problem is good ones are hard to find. Crap ones are everywhere. 

[Jie Bie]

6 hours ago, GogsinBerkshire` said:

I totally agree about the rudderless/blame game, however not about the detailed requirements spec.

Almost every project I've seen with detailed requirements/design docs up front take much longer to complete & has so much waste it's unbelievable - mainly this problem stems from users/stakeholders not knowing in detail what they really want.

Most good projects now have high-level design/requirements up front & this is broken down into more detailed requirements that go onto a backlog & are delivered to the end-user as quickly as possible - this way feedback is given repeatedly & this informs future requirements so the users/stakeholders get what they want, quicker. 

Yeah that's actually a fair point - although as Renfrew says that sounds like an agile approach, which has its own pros and cons.

Edited June 15, 2016 by Jie Bie

[Return of Yermaw]

On ‎26‎/‎05‎/‎2016 at 3:55 PM, thplinth said:

Reading between the lines and calmac's sudden return to post on this rather obscure subject I suspect there is a massive blame game going on between the Scottish government and the Scottish civil service over who and what made an arse of this so badly. 

the Scottish Government is the Scottish Civil Service.

[GogsinBerkshire`]

5 hours ago, RenfrewBlue said:

You're talking about a More agile approach. The success of that is really dependant on the Business users being heavily involved and knowing what they want.

That doesn't work for us and a lot of government departments as they're just not mature enough to fulfil their roles effectively. 

A really good Business Analyst is worth their weight in gold if your business is struggling with describing what they want. They can really drag the data out of them.

Problem is good ones are hard to find. Crap ones are everywhere. 

I am, I was very cynical when I worked on my first agile project but it does work well when run properly.

Agree about the BA's - they're either really good or really bad, not much in between!

Good thing about the approach is that even if the business doesn't know their requirements, they can all say early doors "That's not what we wanted!" then hopefully articulate why & what is needed next.

A good read on how to ( or how not to) run projects is "The Phoenix Project", some of the characters will ring true to anyone who's worked in business/IT.

 

 

[RenfrewBlue]

5 hours ago, GogsinBerkshire` said:

I am, I was very cynical when I worked on my first agile project but it does work well when run properly.

Agree about the BA's - they're either really good or really bad, not much in between!

Good thing about the approach is that even if the business doesn't know their requirements, they can all say early doors "That's not what we wanted!" then hopefully articulate why & what is needed next.

A good read on how to ( or how not to) run projects is "The Phoenix Project", some of the characters will ring true to anyone who's worked in business/IT.

 

 

We've done a couple of projects using am Agile approach but this was only on our public website and with a company that only develop in this way.

I was the technical lead for is on both with experienced and professional PMs. Both projects completed early and under budget which is completely unusual for us.