

The World's Biggest Military Boondoggles - limist
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/29/the_list_the_worlds_biggest_military_boondoggles?page=full

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limist
This list certainly puts into perspective the typical software project's cost
and schedule overruns. OTOH, the resources pumped into what's essentially
tribal warfare belies our species' moniker of _sapiens_.

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yannis
It is as if it is ingrained in the laws of physics that as the size of a
project in money increases, so is the likelihood of overruns in time.
Naturally the cost overruns would force costs to rise. No amount of planning
or management seems to change this.

I am currently involved with a Project (construction related), where all the
ingredients for success are there. Good management, a plan with approximate
26,000 activities (in Primavera), good external Client controls and yet the
Project is behind one year!

Does anyone have the answer? Is there such a thing like a 'self-organizing-
project'? It maybe the answer!

Just to digress, if you multiply the above 26,000 activities say by about 50
sub-activities (to break down the tasks to minutiae) you will have
approximately 1,000,000 activities and can immediately observe the similarity
to software development. Except in the 'real' world you cannot execute these
instructions and start debugging immediately and in the computer world the
'bugs' start appearing only after completion, when a missile lands 30000 km
due to someone converting meters to ft!

