Organizations can learn a great deal from
experience - their own, and that of others.
Yet in the case of information technology, where failures are all too frequent,
it is not uncommon for the same failure situations to occur over and over.
From time to time, failures occur in such a way that they are highly visible and
surrounded by a great deal of publicly available information. These
provide the raw material for our papers on IT failures.
Infonomics papers are written in plain language, for everybody from the board
chair to the coalface of any organization.
I
n October 2005, the Australian Customs
Service launched a new system for processing imports. Within
hours, it was clear that the system was experiencing problems.
For three weeks, Australia's sea ports were clogged, while customs
and industry argued, until the original system was reactivated.
The National Audit Office confirmed that there had been severe
disruption to the national supply chain.
A Catastrophe in Governance of IT traces the evolution of this
project from its early stages, and uses publicly available material
to show how the looming disaster was obvious to anybody who cared to
look and take an interest.
Click on the picture to read an extract.
In
early 2006, Australian Pharmaceutical
Industries installed new accounting systems. Some weeks later,
in July, API found that it was unable to balance its accounts and
could not produce its statutory reports. The company was
suspended from trading for almost 6 weeks and suffered numerous
consequences of its misadventure.
A Salutary Lesson traces the key events and consequences for API,
and looks at how directors can check whether their organizations are
taking satisfactory precautions against similar situations.
Click on the picture to read an extract
