

The Future of Enterprise Software: I Am So Scared, I Am So Excited - nreece
http://7thursdays.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/the-future-of-enterprise-software-i-am-so-scared-i-am-so-excited/

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markbao
$100 million and they couldn't develop something decent? I'm perplexed on
why/how other companies didn't sue SAP for this and just swallowed the pill.

QFT: "...you really can’t fool all the people all the time."

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mynameishere
I occasionally scan job postings, and when I come to the letters,

 _SAP_

...I just instantly close the page. I don't even know that much about them,
but everything I've heard suggests they are IBM minus the illustrious history.

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mtts
The general perception seems to be that "SAP is expensive, difficult to
implement and often doesn't work".

At least, that's what a SAP sales person said in a speech he gave at an event
for SAP implementation partners.

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pchristensen
That's a heck of a sales pitch!

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phaedrus
At least he's candid.

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edw519
Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is".

Do you suppose that if he were a hacker today, he would be writing enterprise
applications?

Enterprises are like oil tankers; they take forever to turn. But, as stories
like this show, they have to turn. Say tuned. I wanna be around (with software
in hand) when it happens.

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phaedrus
About time! As Alex Papadimoulis explained when he (briefly) changed the name
of The Daily WTF to "Worse Than Failure", the problem is not just that so many
software projects fail, it's that so many are passed off as a "success" just
because they are finished, even if they don't work. That's "worse than
failure" because at least you learn from failures.

I think the free market could curb the "software quality problem" but only if
software companies are held accountable. If there were more awareness among
software customers of the low quality of most software written, and a
potential that a software company gets the bejeebus sued out them for shoddy
work, then there are several good things would come of it: 1. Companies
producing shoddy software would go out of business instead of scamming their
way along. 2. When their asses are on the line, maybe they'll start demanding
some quality before quantity. 3. Maybe we'll finally see a state or national
licensing requirement for programmers, like there is for nurses and doctors.

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simianstyle
Can we stop blaming Jesse Spano already? It was like over a decade ago, and it
wasn't her fault!

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mpc
I know, caffeine pill addiction is a sickness.

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willz
I think the Waste Management company is brilliant, and deserves respect. If
you spend a hundred bucks for something that doesn't work, you would ask for a
refund. I wonder why companies didn't do this before. Capitalism is dying
because companies are no longer run by owners, but by "managers".

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gruseom
_I wonder why companies didn't do this before._

I can shed light on one aspect of it. In large companies, if a failure is too
big, it gets rebranded as a success. There are many strategies for doing this.
(In one I saw, the failed project was spun off as a separate group to leverage
all the "value" that had been created.) Absurd as this may be, it works, at
least internally (and most failures are never made public).

This used to puzzle me, but I think there's a simple reason for it. It's ok to
discuss minor failures because these can be blamed on middle managers. Huge
fiascos, on the other hand, can't be. A huge fiasco was a huge project to
begin with, and huge projects are sponsored by executives. These leaders are,
like Madame X from the Flintstones, "much too important to be lost". Ipso
facto, they can't fail.

What this means is that if the failure took place at the hands of a vendor,
they will probably get away with it. Trying hold the vendor accountable makes
_you_ look bad. You can't brand the project a "success" and at the same time
claim they didn't deliver.

So Waste Management is unusual among large companies, which (I believe) are
frequently taken to the cleaners on these enormous software projects. What's
hard to explain is why they decided to take such public action. Perhaps they
have a leader of unusual courage or integrity.

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vlad
They probably felt they were respected like crap by the vendor. When one party
has a disagreement with another, and there's a clear and obvious disparity in
some kind of standing (be it social, financial, racial, age), the party
getting screwed over may feel they need to take action against this or have no
trouble gaining confidence to stand up against a perceived injustice, since
they're fighting two battles for the price of one. It doesn't matter if the
second cause has nothing to do with anything, such as if the difference is
only perceived or didn't matter in the situation.

Whereas in actuality, the other company in question is likely simply trying to
rip off everybody equally (equally, in other words, meaning as much as
possible.)

