US Air Force Scraps ERP Project After $1 Billion Spent

angry tapir writes "The U.S. Air Force has decided to scrap a major ERP (enterprise resource planning) software project after spending $1 billion, concluding that finishing it would cost far too much more money for too little gain. Dubbed the Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS), the project has racked up $1.03 billion in costs since 2005, 'and has not yielded any significant military capability,' an Air Force spokesman said in a statement. 'We estimate it would require an additional $1.1B for about a quarter of the original scope to continue and fielding would not be until 2020. The Air Force has concluded the ECSS program is no longer a viable option for meeting the FY17 Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness (FIAR) statutory requirement. Therefore, we are canceling the program and moving forward with other options in order to meet both requirements.'"

Comments

New project

[Director of Acronyms]

I'd like to see them implement a CRM system instead

Re:New project

[c0lo]

I'd like to see them implement a CRM system instead

Are the victims of drone attacks complaining much about the quality of service?

Re:New project

[Spy Handler]

CRM? Good idea. Then the Air Force can keep better track of its customer data like which Buckwhupistani wedding received a Predator strike package and which one got a JDAM shower and so on.

Re:New project

[jhoegl]

A gift is a gift!

Re:New project

[crutchy]

just be thankful the Buckwhupistani's don't return the gifts

Re:New project

[evil_aaronm]

If they are, they should: if a drone fired at them can't take 'em out, something's not working correctly. /* Note: I'm not for drone strikes, necessarily, but, dammit, if you're targeting something, you'd better take it TF out. */

Re:New project

[ShanghaiBill]

Are the victims of drone attacks complaining much about the quality of service?

Most drone attacks are done by the CIA, not the Air Force. If the Air Force launched the attacks, the results could be second guessed by CIA analysts evaluating satellite photos. But if the CIA both launches the attacks and evaluates the results, it is all wrapped up in a neat little package with no loose strings of accountability.

Re:New project

[wooferhound]

This project has grown too big to fail . . .

Re:New project

[Antonovich]

Don't worry, such gifts are remembered for many generations - the Buckwhupistanis will likely return the gifts at some point... That's just the cost of being so generous.

Re:New project

[TheLink]

Are you a consultant?
http://www.despair.com/consulting.html

Ouch.

[Sorthum]

Seems that this is a common theme with ERP rollouts-- scope creep tends to get them all in the end. Granted, most organizations seem to wave off long before the $1 billion mark...

Re:Ouch.

[Sorthum]

Oh wow, it gets worse. Oracle won this with a $88.5 million bid; what the hell took the Air Force so long to pull the plug with that kind of overrun?

Re:Ouch.

[Amouth]

I love how each branch of the DoD gets to pick it's own ERP solution. It says Oracle won it over SAP, not that i have a preference but SAP has a showing of being successful in the market via is use in the Navy. With all ERP solutions there are going to be issues, but overall the Navy has been very successful with their SAP deployment.

Again, why isn't this pushed from the top of the DoD vs. every branch figuring it out and reinventing the wheel each time?

Re:Ouch.

[icebike]

One has to wonder if the Navy was all that successful or just willing to handle a portion of the job, or willing to settle for half the result.

You will never know, because those who do have too much ass to cover, and they will be slipping in fixes and upgrades for decades, before deciding the whole thing is too top heavy.

Systems of this size are grandiose and seldom successful. Not only government fails at systems this big, private industry does as well. But private industry learns from their costly mistakes faster. Google is a good example. They hold a house cleaning each spring and just arbitrarily kill off projects that have no chance of a ROI.

Its amazing that two world wars were fought with this kind of stuff being handled by people.

Re:Ouch.

[osu-neko]

Oh wow, it gets worse. Oracle won this with a $88.5 million bid; what the hell took the Air Force so long to pull the plug with that kind of overrun?

What's an order of magnitude between friends. :p

Re:Ouch.

[pete6677]

Seriously, has there EVER been an ERP implementation that was anything other than a colossal fuckup? Way behind schedule, overbudget, and not functioning properly are the general themes of ERP. And businesses continue to fall for this scam.

Re:Ouch.

[purpledinoz]

Did anyone also do a double-take on this story? $1B spent on software, and nothing to show for it? Let's say you pay a developer $100K/year, and the project lasted 10 years. That's 1000 developers working on this for 10 years! And after this, nothing to show for it? That's probably the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while... I wonder if a big chunk of this money went to crony suppliers like Halliburton.

Re:Ouch.

[raftpeople]

Most of the ERP implementations I have been part of have been successful. Every major corporation has a working ERP system, how do you think that happened?

There are big failures, typically in situations where the size of the project exceeds the experience and capabilities of the people managing them. With something as big as the DoD, there just aren't too many opportunities for anyone to gain the proper experience to know how to make it successful. Something like that needs to be broken into much smaller pieces and you just have to forego some of the efficiencies of a completely integrated non-redundant system in favor of more manageable pieces.

Re:Ouch.

[raftpeople]

Don't confuse the "Resource Planning" part of ERP with actually meaning anything. ERP used to be MRP when it was just focused on the manufacturing aspects of a business and specifically planning raw material requirements to meet the deman for the finished goods. But as companies added modules to the suite to encompass the entire enterprise, they decided to change the name to Enterprise Resource Planning because it sounded more "Enterprisey". Sure there is some planning in there and a whole bunch of transaction execution and tracking that really isn't related to planning.

Re:Ouch.

[serviscope_minor]

But private industry learns from their costly mistakes faster.

lol.

Let me restate that again: lol.

This comment makes me think that you've worked in neither government nor industry. Or you've been very, very lucky with your employers. Or never worked at a very large company.

Part of the reason (possibly the main one) they fail is due to people. That is the same for both sectors.

With a project that large, it's a big embarressment if it fails, so it's in the interest of the people in charge of the project to force it through at all costs no matter what. Because they don't care about their host organisation (be it government or industry), they care about their own career. Having a big failure like that is a blot. So, instead some half-asses expensive, buggy and minimally functional heap of shit is usually foisted onto the hapless minions of the organisation, usually with a large loss of productivity.

Oracle is usually the cause, and the event should be known as getting "Oracled".

It happens in the public, private and education sector. Oracle knows no limits. They will screw anyone they can get their hands on with crap products. There is no escape.

At least the USAF pulled the plug. After $1bn and a 10x overrun, there is not a single change in hell that the system would every be a net gain. It was a huge fuckup. But given where it was at that time, this was the only sane solution.

The problem is inherent to large organisations. It's not a public versus private problem. It's a big versus small one. That means that the public sector experiences the problems more often due to its size. But basically, large companies suffer exactly the same problems too.

Re:Ouch.

[ZahrGnosis]

To my dismay, I worked on this project. The project started with controversy -- the Oracle bid that beat out SAP like seven years ago was surrounded by complaints. The article skips some details. CSC (Computer Sciences Corp, who is quoted) was the main driver of about $800-million of that spending. It is accurate to say that this change didn't affect them, but that's because hundreds of people had already been laid off or moved of the project between last September and last March.

There's enough blame to go all over the place. Years spent in requirements that weren't turned into code; time spent passing blame back and forth across development teams who were so large and segregated that they rarely communicated properly, both within the Air Force and within CSC and between the other teams. At it's peak I believe the project had roughly 800 people on it. I don't know what the maximum size a development project should have, but it's got to be smaller than that. That number includes everyone, trainers, managers, and some key initial users and testers, but still it's a very high number.

The Air Force tried several times to realign the project, but there were contractual disputes or, once that was over, difficulty deciding what to keep and what to scrap, which lead to a death spiral where everything went back on the drawing board and I think ultimately leadership just lost hope.

It wasn't a complete loss, though. A few small teams, including the one I was previously on, have survived. We built a robust data quality system and are working on some enterprise data dictionary and master data tools, which will help the systems that are left behind. With hundreds of systems supporting a half million users, $1billion probably isn't off the chart -- at least not had this been a successful project, but the worst part is that there's still much work that needs to be done, and now someone will have to start over... again.

Maybe a pattern here

[Anonymous Coward]

From my observations, I've concluded that no organizational group works toward reducing its size, reducing the amount of its discretionary budget, or increasing its accountability for the preceding.

Any exceptions?

those billions

[wbr1]

Those billions could have put a man on mars, or housed many,many homeless people, or any of a bunch of other uses. When will we realize that most of out debt is crime useless military spending, not social programs?

Re:those billions

[DNS-and-BIND]

"Those" billions? It's one billion, singular.

The US government spends 19% on defense, 19% on social security, and 20% on healthcare. The last two items are expected to grow much faster than the first.

Useless? Do you know what a "contested sea zone" is and how it affects commerce? No? Yeah, that's what I thought, and the reason why is overwhelming dominance. Assuming, of course, you like imported coffee at the hip indie coffeeshop and hipster fruits like the Durian instead of that crap domestically made junk.

Re:those billions

[geekoid]

Because civilization is built with taxes.

There a plenty of countries that have no to little taxes, you are welcome to move their and enjoy the squalor and disease.

BTW, you benefit from social programs. Less crime, more industry, more entertainment, better beer.

Naturally

[sjames]

ERP is a bunch of disparate functions mashed together then held in place with a metric assload of duck tape. It's only natural that if you try to tacle the whole thing at once the result will be a sort of dynamic paralysis where you run back and forth in a nearly random pattern burning money all the way.

Just as well, if you ever manage to build the thing, you'll create paralysis across the entire company if you suddenly drop this chimera on people's desks.

Note, I am NOT claiming that the individual functions aren't necessary nor am I claiming that they shouldn't support common data formats.I am claiming that trying to build the whole thing at once and as a single 'solution' is wrong headed and doomed to failure.

Enterprise resource planning?

[Namarrgon]

If only they'd had a better ERP system, they could've planned this project more carefully, and put all those resources to better use.

Re:Enterprise resource planning?

[a_hanso]

Did you... just... invent a bootstrapping ERP system?

Re:There IS accountability

[sg_oneill]

Liberalism and leftism are not a fan clubs. Many of us might prefer the big O over the alternative whilst also deeply disaproving drone strikes against allied countries.

Re:There IS accountability

[Taco Cowboy]

disaproving drone strikes against allied countries.

Huh ?!

CIA launched drone strikes on Israel?!

Oh, c'mon ! Pakistan isn't an "allied country". Them Pakis actively support the Talibans.
 

Re:There IS accountability

[TheCarp]

Well you know...its ok to compromise on such a little detail like that. I mean, its not like people are going to die over it....oh wait...

Yah, thats why I never voted for him. Being the scum floating on top of the other scum doesn't make it any more appetizing to me.

Re:Why? Becasue people know it sucks.

[erp_consultant]

Bullshit. I have been involved in dozens of ERP implementations over the years. The software works. When implementations fail it is always, in my experience, because of the people (i.e. management) making the decisions on how to implement the product.

Me: "Let me show you how Product X handles Accounts Payable"
Client: "That's not how we do it"
Me: "This might be a good opportunity to take a look at your current business practices and see if they can be done in a more efficient way"
Client: "But we've always done it this way"
Me: "Why?"
Client "Dunno...just always have. And I doubt that the team is willing to change"
Me: "Ok, we can customize the product to make it work the way you want but it's going to take more time and money. And when you do an upgrade later on there will be implications as well"
Client: "Fine. Just make it work the way we do it now"

And so it goes. Time and again I see clients go out and buy an expensive ERP system only to customize the bejezus out of it to make it look exactly like the systems they are retiring. They are not open to better business practices. Too many political headwinds.

What does this say about these clowns in the Air Force? It takes them 10 years and $1.03B to realize that the project is going to fail? On an original budget of $88M? One of the big problems with trying to shoehorn a best practice ERP system into a large government institution is that often they employ worst practices. They won't, or can't, change them so you have to end up rewriting the product to fit their ass backwards ways. The whole purpose of implementing an ERP system is to replace aging, stove-piped systems with modern integrated systems. It can work well if it's implemented properly and the right decisions are made along the way. But it's not a magic pill.

Re:There IS accountability

[DrLang21]

Oh to be young an idealistic again. Someday you'll understand that the world just isn't so simple. For example, while I do not condone Obama's actions in the Middle East conflicts, Romney would have been far more agressive and openly so. I actually believe he would start a war with Iran. So who am I to vote for in such a tightly contested race? Gary Johnson? We all know that he won't win because America won't even vote Libertarians into low level local offices. So it would be irresponsible for me to not vote for and support Obama.

Re:There IS accountability

[cusco]

And our "ally" Israel has launched terrorist attacks against Americans on US soil, attempted to bomb the offices of a Muslim US senator, has repeated been caught carrying out espionage against our intel agencies and businesses, deliberately feeds false intel to the State department, sells weapons to our enemies, sells our military technology to China, attempted to bomb the Mexican parliament, and boasts about carrying out false flag terrorist attacks so that the US will retaliate against their enemies for them. Hopefully Netenyahu shot himself in the foot with his open endorsement of Romney.