back to article When red flags are just office decoration: Edinburgh Uni's Oracle IT disaster

Before Edinburgh University went live with its disastrous Oracle finance and HR system rollout, senior managers either didn't get the message about "red" risks or ignored it, an independent report has found. This week The Register reported that Oracle partner Inoapps won an additional £3.6 million ($4.5 million) contract fee …

  1. Tom7

    So easy

    It's so easy for large organisations to see anyone warning of problems as nay-sayers who just don't like change.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: So easy

      It's irritating for manglement who would, if they weren't manglers, realise that it's the irritant in the oyster that produces the pearl.

    2. Lurko

      Re: So easy

      But the issue of naysayers is only part of this project. Speed reading the PA report, it's clear that Edinburgh Uni ignored the divided organisational culture they had before this project started, they under-resourced the project, they overlooked the complexity of big IT & process change, they forced change on people, they didn't communicate, and they didn't listen. Whilst I can't comment on whether PA have picked up all and everything, the report itself is a masterclass in how not to do change. The university will of course commit that "lessons will be learned", but of course they won't. By the time Edinburgh next does a huge systems change, everybody will have changed jobs, the few old buzzards remaining who say "we need to review the P&M disaster of '21" will be ignored, and by then all documentation and this report will have been inaccessibly archived. In my reasonable experience of such things, organisational memory is both selective and fairly short - finding a business case for a project started more than three years ago is often near impossible.

      In many ways, everything I would expect from university management. I can recall when universities were centres of learning, now they seem to be simply Matrix-style farms where students exist for their debt capacity, and university nurtures and grows that debt, to be harvested by the institution and its hangers on. The vice chancellor who has overseen most of this mess was paid over £350k in 2022, so it's good to see Edinburgh Uni is paying top whack to attract the best management talent from around the world. /s

      1. Management Order

        Re: So easy

        I think the issue with Universities in particular when it comes to large business change projects is that executive management tends to be made up of current or former academics who dont know how to run multi million pound business that Universities have necessarily become because of government policy. Something like an ERP system is typically seen through the lens of "that's an IT system to implement" not "that's a business change programme for the business to deliver". Outside of the IT function, which probably brings in consultants and contractors for the implementation, the rest of the back office business (eg Finance, HR) think that it can be delivered by existing staff within the capacity of their existing roles. Its doomed from the outset as there is often no business change leadership, budget, or process.

        1. abend0c4 Silver badge

          Who dont know how to run multi million pound business ...

          The litany of ERP horror stories would suggest very few people know how to run large businesses. Or, indeed, are not in post for that specific purpose - in practice, a "successful" business is one that extracts short term benefits for its present stakeholders (whether they be shareholders or managers on bonuses), not one that succeeds on its own terms.

          Indeed, many businesses originally succeeded despite their management, but subsequently fail because of it.

        2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

          Re: So easy

          It's not just Universities: It's public sector in general. They think that because you're a world leading expert in X, Y or Z, you'll also make an excellent senior manager who can manage hundreds of staff and multi-million pound budgets.

          As much as we malign managers in the comments section, management is a skill. Some people have it, some people can learn it and others just can't do it.

          1. Martin Gregorie

            Re: So easy

            Agreed. In my experience people with similar management skills and techniques tend to occur in clusters, so it looks very much as if both good and bad management habits are learned from their colleagues to a greater extent that we often realise.

            So, I've had generally good experiences with:

            * Managers in Australia and NZ.

            * Everybody involved in running a small New York-based toy manufacturer where I spent a year building a custom sales system.

            * Within IT, most of the managers I worked for back in the 70s and 80s in ICL and, especially Data Kill project managers, were pretty good.

            * Logica's management, as a group, were uniformly good apart from a few MBAs that managed to sneak in.

            * On the other hand, with the exception of their team leaders, almost all the higher UK Civil Service management grades I've run on projects into have been abysmal, often being more interested in preparing their retirement sinecures or playing one-upmanship games with their contemporaries than actually doing their job.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: So easy

              "On the other hand, with the exception of their team leaders, almost all the higher UK Civil Service management grades I've run on projects into have been abysmal, often being more interested in preparing their retirement sinecures or playing one-upmanship games with their contemporaries than actually doing their job."

              This is perhaps a deviation as Edinburgh Uni has little or nothing to do with the Civil Service, but as a civil servant just below Senior Civil Service (SCS) level I'd agree with you. The SCS do have a few extremely good leaders, but they are offset by the many who really should be cleaning toilets. I'm lucky, I work in a directorate where 90% of the senior management are competent and really understand the job they are doing, but even for us changing government policy is still something that takes about four years, no matter how obvious the required change is to you and I. Also, unless it's urgent for the government of the day then any needed change is at risk of being bumped for some higher priority for the political classes, or derailed by an election or reshuffle. The SCS is still top heavy with Oxbridge humanities graduates who drift on "fast track" schemes, have never done a proper job, and little value is placed on private sector experience during selection processes. The civil service have a capability framework (like all big organisations) but candidate choice is undertaken with very little regard to actual experience, performance in past roles, or whether the candidate would be a good and decisive leader. Essentially, the interview is scored, the score decides who gets the job, and the process is designed to reduce the options for managers to make a good, rounded choice. Answer the capability questions like a senior civil servant, and you'll get on. As one example, most CS roles ask for a personal statement of say 1,000 words. I've worked for decades in the private sector and have a view that less is more, and when recruiting, if somebody bored me with 1,000 words of drivel they'd not get an interview. In the Civil Service, NOT using the full word count is held against candidates. And of course there's the salaries, which are generally very poor against the private sector until you're at in the very top grades SCS 3 and 4.

              The problem with projects is that too many SCS take the concept of British government that the CS is the administrative branch, and therefore cannot take executive decisions, and apply that to every aspect of managing the civil service, and the projects they run. So avoiding decisions or making poor ones is not seen as the failing it ought to be, and the sort of day to day decisions that project managers and senior responsible officers ought to make are often dodged by shunting them upwards until they reach a minister's desk. Believe it or not, ministers are hugely overworked (in part because of the upward delegation), and other than for absolutely critical aspects of policy, they'll gets two sides of A4 briefing on a decision point and usually a recommendation, but that invariably lacks the detail, history, subtleties and consequences around those choice.

              And then there's the other thing, that the Civil Service is far too small. That statement will have the armchair experts spluttering their coffee all over their Daily Vile, but here's the numbers: Civil Service costs just under £12bn a year. Government spending is near enough £1.2 trillion, so the cost of administration (policy & strategy, planning, costs of operational delivery) is 1% of total spending. The nearest private sector equivalent would be sales, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses of the very largest corporation - civil service don't do sales, but big companies don't do policy development for a zillion and one different activities. I'd accept a 2% correction for marketing costs, but since SG&A for the top quartile of the largest corporations in Europe is 7% that's still 5% for the leanest in the private sector versus 1% for UK government. If you look at the average of large corporations things become even more striking, SG&A is around 13.5%, scrub even 3.5% for marketing and that's 10% of revenues spent on admin, versus 1%. Private companies on average spend ten times as much to administer their business as the UK government does. This is a large part of why projects go wrong, this is why vendors run rings round government on technology and services, this is why poor decisions are made to privatise things that should never be in private hands, this is why lobbyists and NGOs have such a disproportionate voice in policy making. this is why everything looks inefficient and bad outcomes occur time and again, this (in part) is why things happen slowly.

            2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              Re: So easy

              On the other hand, with the exception of their team leaders, almost all the higher UK Civil Service management grades I've run on projects into have been abysmal, often being more interested in preparing their retirement sinecures or playing one-upmanship games with their contemporaries than actually doing their job.

              Parkinson identified this problem in 1955.

          2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: So easy

            "As much as we malign managers in the comments section, management is a skill."

            The reason we malign them is that relatively few have the skill. Promoting people to management on account of having some other skill makes no more sense them promoting someone to head chemist because they're an outstanding mechanical engineer. But it happens because company (it goes far wider than public sector) career structures allow only limited promotion in non-managerial specialities and they need to make those promotions for staff retention.

            1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              Re: So easy

              The reason we malign them is that relatively few have the skill.

              I don't think we can safely say that. What we can say is that we are in general very bad at identifying people with the skill, which is a different thing.

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: So easy

            Universities aren't public sector though, they're businesses that have contracts off the government for providing certain services, like Capita or Balfour Beatty

            The delusion that thinking someone is excellent at their job means they'll make a good manager can be seen in professional sports, not exactly public sector - why did any number of great players make such poor managers?

          4. Ian Johnston Silver badge

            Re: So easy

            Business schools love to sell (literally) the concept of a "generalist manager", able to manage successfully any type of organisation. In fact there is no evidence that these people exist: there are people who are very good at running engineering companies not any good at running hospitals or department stores.

        3. Sahmee

          Re: So easy

          Spot on. It's madness that so many top positions in universities are current or recent academics with not even the most basic understanding of, or interest in, how large organisations function or what processes are involved in keeping them running.

          Staff in the professional services side of the organisation need to work their way through a series of relevant roles, steadily accumulating experience and responsibility, whereas academic staff move up through a largely irrelevant academic career path centred on their area of academic expertise then make a relatively late jump across to leading the organisation.

          This leaves you with knowledgeable and effective people mopping up disasters created by a panel of experts in baroque music, anti-corrosive coatings and animal husbandry dreaming up unnecessary initiatives.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: So easy

            Why do you think academics have no experience of managing large organisations or their processes? Most professors I know have to juggle large, often multi-national, projects, steer the direction of their fields via advisory panels, deal with infrastructure concerns on large equipment grants etc. They often complain the higher they go, the less they're involved in the hands-on research they're actually interested in.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: So easy

              "Most professors I know have to juggle large, often multi-national, projects, [etc]"

              Well, both yes and no. In many cases, there is a whole mostly-invisible and often little-thanked team of professional services staff (and/or less senior academic researchers) doing a large proportion of the administrative and organisational work to make these things actually happen without the wheels falling off (even if it was the academic's research background that made the funding available in the first place). As with everyone, some academics are indeed blessed in having both the research skills and the organisational skills to make such projects work well, but some are, shall we say, purely research-focused…

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: So easy

            In my experience - just retired from academia - the problem is that it is almost always second and third rate academics who make the jump to senior management, where the poor thinking skills which limited their academic careers have the inevitable result. When, rarely, a really good academic decides to go into university management they are generally pretty good.

        4. hoola Silver badge

          Re: So easy

          There is also the basic misunderstanding that many universities (and plenty of other organisations) also do time and time again.

          IT departments forget that they are there to facilitate the business to do their primary function. The reality is clearly identified in the report is IT and higher management have done just that, taking what they see as a solution and trying to force it onto users, often without even asking what their requirements are.

          The outcome is wholly predictable and is something that I have seen with monotonous regularity at the institution I worked at.

          There are something where it comes to data protection and security where universal adoption is needed however something like this is not one of them.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: So easy

            IT departments forget that they are there to facilitate the business to do their primary function. The reality is clearly identified in the report is IT and higher management have done just that, taking what they see as a solution and trying to force it onto users, often without even asking what their requirements are.

            Oh dear Lord yes. The IT department in my until-recently $UNIVERSITY was staffed almost entirely by arrogant idiots who failed to recognize that the place needed them to facilitate actual work.

        5. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: So easy

          In my experience it's the reverse actually. A trend towards hiring IT managers who don't appear to have a clue what the mission (teaching and research) of a university is. Hence we end up with dumb policies that typically are designed for the admin staff - because of course administration needs to feed itself.

          Whether they are competent is an entirely separate issue.

      2. TVU

        Re: So easy

        It would not surprise me at all if it came out the the university's own IT department had raised concerns about the implementation of this project but were overruled by management and the rest is history as they say...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: So easy

          We're in the foothills of an ERP transformation project at the moment and I have been screaming loud and long that it's not an IT delivery as some people think, it's a whole business deliverable with all the change/transformation that comes with it (and it needs to start at the business end and work inwards) but ... (a pause for reflection) ... it's hard going.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: So easy

            "We're in the foothills of an ERP transformation project at the moment"

            Make sure that the PA report on Edinburgh is circulated widely. It'll probably still be ignored, but at least your conscience won't be troubled.

        2. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: So easy

          In at least one case in a university I worked at, policies and IT project adoptions were announced by the Vice Provost, with that announcement being the first the IT department knew of them

          In particular, moving the entire (working, but slightly overloaded because it was running on old hardware) mail system across to MS Outlook365, which cost several million pounds (for what was claimed to be a "free" service from MS) and taking staff requirements from 0.5FTE mail admin and 2 helpdeskers to a fulltime team of 6 mail admins plus 20 on the helpdesk

          And (of course), that free mail system didn't stay free for long

          The same university's Oracle implementation of the financial system was even less usable than the preceeding unusable Sage one, which in turn replaced a working system which was suffering from hitting operational limits on old hardware

          Edinburgh is far from a unique story in British Universities and won't be the last such case. I know the university I worked for is running scared of the thought of the Public Accounts Committee looking into things

      3. jmch Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: So easy

        "now they seem to be simply Matrix-style farms where students exist for their debt capacity"

        Absolutely this, unfortunately fueled by grade inflation, degree inflation, and having every job that could be done by a competent trade-school level student with a few months training as requiring a degree-level applicant with 5+years' experience. So many students end up being forced to take a degree they don't need as the only way to get a job that doesn't need degree-level skills anyway. Yet another way in which our society uses "won't you think of the children" as a soundbite but is actually set up to screw kids kids and young people over.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: So easy

          It's one thing we can thank "education, education, education" Blair for. He wanted half the population trained to degree level without ever troubling himself to ask if half the jobs in the country were at graduate level.

          1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

            Re: So easy

            There is a hidden snobbery there, I fear. Ask yourself a different question: "What proportion of jobs require at least three years of education training after school?" and then ask "Why should the qualifications obtained in that time not all be called degrees?"

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: So easy

          There is no such thing as "degree level skill"...they don't teach you skills at Uni...you go there to acquire useless knowledge on archaic topics.

          Back when I was considering Uni (early 00's) the tech courses were so archaic that I refused to go. I decided to go straight into work and get industry certifications instead...that never failed me until the last 5 years or so...it's insane how many roles now require a degree.

          I've seen businesses turn away genuine talent (that didn't have a degree) in lieu of ensuring the applicant they picked had a degree. It hasn't happened to me yet, I've carved out a niche for myself walking into fires, but for the folks looking for a more chilled out approach to an IT career, it's become incredibly difficult.

          That said, right now, even with a degree you can't get hired. My nephew got his Comp Sci degree last year...he has applied for over 100 roles and has yet to see an interview room. The lad has a lot of talent and is itching to work...he did the degree because it was required for a lot of roles and now he can't even score an interview.

          1. Lurko

            Re: So easy

            "That said, right now, even with a degree you can't get hired. My nephew got his Comp Sci degree last year...he has applied for over 100 roles and has yet to see an interview room. The lad has a lot of talent and is itching to work...he did the degree because it was required for a lot of roles and now he can't even score an interview."

            With not a single interview from 100+ applications tells me something is wrong with his choice of job, or his applications. The employers likely interview 4-7 candidates for each post, that's say 600 interview opportunities and he's not managed one. I'd hazard a guess he's doing something that means he's not even get to the long list of CVs perused by the hiring manager, possibly because he's failing the keyword bingo test that's sometimes entirely automated these days.

            Serious proposal - as a relative it's often a bit touchy to try and get involved, but can't you find a colleague willing to offer him some coaching advice, to make sure he's applying for the right sort of roles, his applications are good and professional, getting the keywords in the CV, and meets any employer's criteria as stated in the advert?

          2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

            Re: So easy

            So you are saying that degrees are useless (I note that you didn't attend university) and that your nephew can't use his to get a job. Which is what you'd expect with a useless qualification, no?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So easy

      "It's so easy for large organisations to see anyone warning of problems as nay-sayers who just don't like change."

      To be fair, the reverse is also true - it's difficult for large organisations to differentiate real concerns from nay-sayers who just don't like change.

      Risk assessment is nearly always done in isolation. In my organisation recently there were two competing and interlinked risks - risk 1, that a software component would go out of support without an upgrade to the latest version. risk 2, upgrading said software may cause incompatibilities with another software. There wasn't enough time to test for risk 2. So risk 1 just materialised by default.

      Risk 2 was, in many people's opinion, absolutely negligible and raised by known detractors. Risk 1 is far more concerning. Yet no-one could ever choose which risk to allow to materialise, so the time-driven one won by default.

      In the case of Ed uni, the "hard deadline" may have been so overwhelmingly important (financially or operationally), such that the risks were acceptable. Risks don't necessarily materialise, and are often raised just for arse-covering after the fact.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So easy

        The second scenario here is always written off as being raised by troublemakers.

        I raise this sort of stuff all the time and I'm sometimes accused of trying to derail projects...in actual fact I'm just looking for suffient time to test...because based on experience, I know, that if you don't properly test you can't properly implement...getting stuff done quick at this end fucks you at the other end.

  2. John Riddoch

    There's a joke which I've seen where the engineer's "this is full of shit" gets translated up the management line to "this is akin to manure" before going to senior management as "it is like that which provides growth" as the rough edges get chipped off the communication. No-one likes to tell their manager that things are failing because they'll get the blame, so nothing gets reported accurately.

    See also: Horizon. At least in Edinburgh Uni's case, it hasn't resulted in wrongful convictions of innocent people.

    1. DJV Silver badge

      Here it is in full - it's called "The Plan"

      https://funnyshit.com.au/the_plan.html

      It should be essential reading for all levels from the lowest worker to the CEO!

      1. ChoHag Silver badge

        Re: Here it is in full - it's called "The Plan"

        The lowest worker (ie. the worker) will be tasked with reading it and crafting a report for his manager which summarises its message.

      2. Will Godfrey Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Here it is in full - it's called "The Plan"

        I've kept a copy here for some time, and sent it to a few people. Some get it, others are offended.

    2. dinsdale54

      Some years back, a colleague who had just joined from another Unix server company recounted a similar story.

      They were running benchmarks on the soon to be released next gen systems and up to their neck with both hardware and software issues needing to be fixed before anything would run successfully. His WTF moment happend when the CEO passed him in the corridor and said 'I hear you are getting great benchmark numbers on the new systems'

      It had only taken about 3 layers of management speak for the message to completely reverse from the truth.

      1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Again a classic quote:

        "Send reinforcements. We're going to advance."

        becomes:

        "Send three and fourpence. We're going to a dance."

      2. the spectacularly refined chap Silver badge

        They were running benchmarks on the soon to be released next gen systems and up to their neck with both hardware and software issues needing to be fixed before anything would run successfully. His WTF moment happend when the CEO passed him in the corridor and said 'I hear you are getting great benchmark numbers on the new systems'

        Sometimes it's simply a different, legitimate perspective. I recall five or six years ago I was charged with developing a new process to be rolled out in about six months time. Had enough control to be able to manage it effectively, business processes and IT were both under me. Learning and Development were handling training but on details from me, with my sign off and me gatecrashing the first couple of training sessions.

        Of course this nirvana couldn't last, two months in the timescale changed from "in four months" to "next week". Made for a very scrappy week getting ready in those conditions but we rolled out on the day. A couple of hours late admittedly for some last minute training, but the right day.

        At perhaps 2:30pm the ops manager ultimately responsible for the area walks in and asks how is it going? Response from the rank and file: it's complete chaos. My response: it's going relatively smoothly. The team leaders involved thought much the same.

        The concerns of rank and file were they didn't know what they were doing. I'd expected that, in most cases it was simply underlining the relevant part of their training if they hit a snag, there was only one area where I'd noted the training itself could be improved to say "In these cases (and that includes THOSE cases)..."

        The other was the "Process doesn't work" pile. Obviously you'd rather not have those but it's hardly unexpected. Quoted some figures: we've processed 3000 cases today, the mystery box has about 20 cases in it. Of those about half are Welsh indicating a particular issue, I haven't had chance to fully investigate the others yet while I support the end users...

        He went away absolutely delighted, sure a few teething issues but as smooth a roll out as you could hope for. Same situation, just a different perspective.

    3. DaveLS

      The DEMO Project

      This is from a mid-1980s fortune cookie file that came with a BSD Unix (~4.2) distribution:

      In the beginning was the DEMO Project. And the Project was without form. And darkness was upon the staff members thereof. So they spake unto their Division Head, saying, "It is a crock of shit, and it stinks."

      And the Division Head spake unto his Department Head, saying, "It is a crock of excrement and none may abide the odor thereof."

      Now, the Department Head spake unto his Directorate Head, saying, "It is a container of excrement, and is very strong, such that none may abide before it."

      And it came to pass that the Directorate Head spake unto the Assistant Technical Director, saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer and none may abide by its strength."

      And the assistant Technical Director spake thus unto the Technical Director, saying, "It containeth that which aids growth and it is very strong."

      And, Lo, the Technical Director spake then unto the Captain, saying, "The powerful new Project will help promote the growth of the Laboratories."

      And the Captain looked down upon the Project, and He saw that it was Good!

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "some users, who tried to provide constructive input and feedback, felt that they were considered disruptive by leadership and not listened to."

    Manglement at its finest.

    1. ChoHag Silver badge
      FAIL

      > An external review has been completed to highlight what lessons we can learn

      When your staff who do the work say "this system is a crock of shit and cannot do the work", listen to them.

      Here's another one nobody in the history of ever has managed to work out yet: sales droids lie.

      Isn't a university a place where people to go to learn things?

    2. munnoch Bronze badge

      It gets very tiring being the guy constantly shouting "ICEBERG!!".

      I've stopped doing it at my organisation.

  4. Dr_Cynic

    No surprise

    From my many years of experience with University central IT much the same criticism could be directed at most of their projects, policies and implementations (though possibly not with such large financial costs).

    The workers at the bottom are generally fine , but the top managers try to implement one size fits all policies, that whilst possibly pefectlty reasonable in a big financial institurion make no sense when dealing with research, academics or students.

    When implementing new IT systems , whikst they have consultation meetings the design decisions are often based onlyb on satisfying the simplest requirements of small departments whilst telling the larger departments with more complex requirements that they won't implement something because 'nobody else has an issue' (which is uusally not true).

    1. DAS-EMS

      Re: No surprise

      I had exactly the same issues that Dr_Cynic had especially where Central IT tried to implement the one size fits all. A lot of work I had done in my School such as rationalising multiple login for the same person. This had to be undone to allow people to use the new system, much of my life wasted!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hilarious - remember PA Consulting & Sainsbury’s?

    An Oracle implementation by PA which resulted in no stock on the shelves. Poacher turned gamekeeper - or traditional small consulting firm doing what they all do.

  6. Chris Evans

    Will any heads roll?

    I doubt it. Taking responsibility for anything negative in most organisations, rarely seems to happen these days.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Will any heads roll?

      Absolutely won't. The people responsible are faithful supporters of the current university leader.

      The system supposedly was going to unify different systems and colleges.

      So they went for one of the smaller colleges, run a pilot, and asked everyone else dor processes and requirements.

      They then proceed to ignore everything and everyone and produced a system missing key features.

      After more than a year of further work, the system still is not fit for purpose...

      Anon, obvs.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Will any heads roll?

        There wasn't any pilot.

        However by all accounts the senior leaders involved in this that should have got a bollocking or the chop from PedroM got rewarded instead!!!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ...And Then There Is Birmingham To Consider......

    What is the common denominator?

    Well.....that would be Larry Ellison! Needs the money for the next Americas Cup!....the super yacht.....the executive jet.......and so on.......

    Much more important than taxpayers in Birmingham or students in Edinburgh!

    1. Tom7

      Re: ...And Then There Is Birmingham To Consider......

      Hell, at least Edinburgh got a system delivered.

      A certain suppler in the USA, who we shall call Seer and who have a big, bright blue logo, have been in court repeatedly recently because of a new gimmick they've devised. It goes something like this:

      A large public body comes to Seer with a proposal to roll out a new ERP system. "Fabulous!" say Seer. "It'll take three years and cost you $300 million."

      "Okay," says the public body, "what's the payment plan for that look like? 30% upfront, the remainder on delivery of key milestones?"

      "Ah," says Seer, "Actually we have a new policy on that. All projects have to have payment up-front in full."

      "What???" says the public body. "Even if we wanted to do that, there's no way we have that sort of money in this year's budget."

      "Well," say Seer, "What about we _lend_ you the money so you can pay us up front and then pay it back in nice, easy monthly installments?"

      The public body shakes its head but says, "Well, if that's how you want to do it, okay..."

      As soon as the contract is signed, Seer sell the loan on to Seer Financial Services, a company that _sounds_ closely related but when you go digging into the paperwork turns out to be very, very carefully separated from Seer. SFS starts collecting the easy monthly payments.

      Two years later, it becomes readily apparent that Seer have done essentially nothing on the project and the original three-year project is still a solid four years away from delivery. The public body starts witholding payment to try to get action, only to get sued by SFS because project delivery is nothing to do with them, they're just providing financial services. If the public body has a problem with the project delivery, they need to take that up with Seer.

      Thankfully, courts have started ruling that this is a scam.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "readiness assessment was a tick-box exercise, identifying risks but not influencing the go-live decision which had already been made given the hard implementation dates"

    This is depressingly common. I have lost count of the number of times I've been given a date to hit, only for me to point out that planning backwards from said date, given the work being requested, means I should have started the work 6 months ago. I have raised risks, only for them to be 'dropped' or 'sanitised' so the risk is no longer representative or tracked. Other times I've just been uninvited to meetings because I kept asking the questions that needed to be asked. Simple things like "Do you have hardware support in place for all that old kit we're being asked to move"....

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Make sure you keep a paper trail...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        And do things like ask "I see I'm no longer in Planning Meeting For $X, don't you need me there?" and keep the response.

        So later you can prove you were actively removed, not just accidentally dropped by Teams or whatever. Plus it shows you were "proactive"

        BTDTGTTS.

    2. Mike 137 Silver badge

      "identifying risks but not influencing the go-live decision which had already been made"

      Over three decades in IT and infosec management, and I yet have to see a risk assessment actually being used to inform decision making. The annual assessment exercise exists to be annually audited.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: "identifying risks but not influencing the go-live decision which had already been made"

        "The annual assessment exercise exists to be annually audited."

        This is because ISO9000 and its offspring are standards for quality of paperwork. It's the rule that once a metric becomes a target it ceases to be a useful metric writ large.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "identifying risks but not influencing the go-live decision which had already been made"

          aka Goodhart's Law

  9. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "given the hard implementation dates"

    The best way to fail a project is decide when it needs to be delivered before finding out how long it will take to do it.

  10. trevorde Silver badge

    Trifecta!

    Late, over budget and low quality - in most projects, you get at least two but in ERP projects you get none

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Academia vs business

    As the son of an academic, who went from a simple Professor to head of department, there is a massive gap between pure academia and running a business.

    Universities are alas now big business, with a massive culture clash between the two sides.

    You see the same in public sector.

    It takes a certain type of integrator to cut through the culture. User acceptance testing is key and the users have to be classed as stakeholders.

  12. jmch Silver badge

    Typical....

    This

    "some users, who tried to provide constructive input and feedback, felt that they were considered disruptive by leadership and not listened to."

    and this

    "readiness assessment was a tick-box exercise, identifying risks but not influencing the go-live decision which had already been made given the hard implementation dates"

    strike me as typical of projects where management just sees the pretty picture painted to them by the consultants and refuse to look at the reality, lest they "believe their lying eyes". It's a well-known psychological avoidance mechanism.... some people may also be familiar with similair patterns in relationship situations

  13. Primus Secundus Tertius

    Management and Jargon

    The PA document is stiff with management jargon. I do realise it would be a lot longer if written in clear English, but it would be far more useful if it had been.

    It is a classic example of a document written for the benefit of the authors rather than for the people who need to read it. For that reason I fear it will not help to improve future systems at Edinburgh University. It is an example of a major problem in this disaster of a project: that nobody was discussing matters frankly and clearly with the working staff who would be directly affected, in terms that those workers would understand.

    One small item among its findings was close to my heart: the poor quality of the data in the preceding systems, so it took much longer to achieve a clean set of data in the new system. At various times I have had to clean up membership lists of various organisations, in which names, addresses, and dates were recorded in slightly different ways by my various predecessors. That matters little if all the list is used for is to print address labels; but when you also want to analyse membership by location, and do financial things, consistency of data is essential.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Management and Jargon

      If the people who need to read it are managers then it's been written in the correct language.

  14. ghp

    Can someone tell me why a university or town council would choose an ERP for its administration?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Two possible reasons. One is that there are no products specifically labelled University Administration System or Local Government Resource Planning. The other is that they know what ERP stands for and see themselves as running Enterprises (with a capital E of course).

    2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

      Because a university is an enterprise. Edinburgh University offers ~500 programmes (products) to ~50,000 students (customers) with ~11,000 staff and a turnover of ~£1.3bn. That scale of operation is not managed over tea and buns in a senior common room.

    3. ghp

      Well, if that is all the justification they needed, no wonder. We run a starship, so we'll boldly go ...

  15. crediblywitless

    No surprise there, then

    University's senior management not consulting the staff actually doing the job, not paying attention to them when they volunteer input, and going ahead with something that's a poorly-implemented bad idea? Absolutely unprecedented, eh

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nobody bats an eyelid at the price tag anymore

    Developers and analysts are well paid but not millions.

    How can millions be justified for around £500K of salaries for a year maximum? Even taking into account the support and contacts it's nowhere near multi millions.

    It's all a scam with figures pulled out of thin air, so I suppose management can give themselves an even bigger a pat or the back for their hard work.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Experience as a student

    I was a student hired to help teach classes as this was being rolled out. I didn't get paid for months as there were "issues outside of our control" constantly. Made it really rough to live without knowing what my budget was going to be like. It was genuinely an utter disaster. From talking with some friends who worked with the IT department, this was absolutely the doing of senior management. Completely unsurprising from Edinburgh University though.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Experience as a student

      "I didn't get paid for months as there were "issues outside of our control" constantly."

      That's the kind of thing which gets judges upset if you decide to go down the "legal" route

  18. Jim Whitaker

    "Oracle IT disaster". That headline must be in standing type at so many publications.

  19. ChrisW88

    I saw it up close

    I was really heartened to see that there was precious little bad in the report to be said about the people actually working on the project. Lots of really excellent UoE staff, contractors & Inoapps people worked like dogs on that one. Once you get past the fact that the PA report is 40+ pages of badly formatted text, inexplicably delivered in landscape PowerPoint, instead of a regular Word document people could actually read, it boils down to a few things:

    - The uni essentially had a systems implementation, without sorting the business transformation first. I can say with a certain knowledge that the project team (both staff & SI) told them this was a bad idea repeatedly, but there was no time/budget to change. Covid really didn't help either.

    - Old Russell Group unis in particular have a big disconnect between the corporate admin function trying to run the multi-million pound business and major local employer, and the semi-autonomous collection of academic departments, who guard their fiefdoms fiercely and hate both change & any suggestion they should actually do regular management activity like purchasing, expense approvals, HR, etc., as this is all a distraction from their precious research/teaching. It should all just magically happen for them, but without them losing any control of their fiefdom.

    - I cannot say this loudly enough, as I see it time and again, if the UAT is overrunning, DELAY YOUR GO-LIVE. Don't stop testing and go-live anyway hoping it will all be OK. It won't. Someone has to fix all the testing issues you're now going to spot for the first time in Production, and while they do, someone else else isn't getting paid, with major impacts on their company, staff, livelihoods, etc.

    - Do not build immovable go-live dates into your programme, even if it's a response to missing a previous one. It's all very well to have a budget envelope and a hard stop to aim for, but what happens when you get there and it's not ready?

    1. ColinPa Silver badge

      going up in smoke

      We had an astronaut come and talk to our development team. This was an eye opener.

      These guys would walk around their software development team saying hi, and meeting the developers.

      This made the developers think "If I get this wrong this nice guy is going to die".

      They sat in on the "is this code ready 'to fly'?" meetings which made people think twice about saying yes.

      To misquote Benjamin Franklin.

      “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of shipping on time”

    2. Tron Silver badge

      Re: I saw it up close

      quote: their precious research/teaching.

      That is why a uni exists. And that is why they focus on it. They don't do it to sell branded merch.

      quote: any suggestion they should actually do regular management activity like purchasing, expense approvals, HR, etc.

      That's because they are academics, trained and paid to teach students, look after students, lecture to students, support research students, write a specific number of peer-reviewed articles each year, write books, attend conferences, keep up to date on their field, hold conferences and defend themselves from being axed by government diktat. And on top of that, they had to clean up the shit caused by this failure when their students weren't paid and suppliers wouldn't supply.

      Universities have admin staff for admin. There is a clue in the title. The software should support admin and should be custom built to work for the circumstances, not taken off the shelf and bodged. A uni is not a corporate, even though senior execs like to pretend it is and pay themselves accordingly.

      The response is political. We will learn. We will do better. Nobody will be fired. Nobody will pay financially for screwing up. Given the appalling underfunding of education at the pointy end, the scrabble for small amounts of grant, and the debts students find themselves in, as well as state meddling that is gutting unis of the foreign students who subsidise domestic ones, these sums are offensive.

      A software company walks away with an even bigger sack of cash for a system that will limp along until it is replaced again a few years down the line - how much PER YEAR will this software have cost when it is retired? The education system doesn't have the sort of money the corporate world does and doesn't work like it. Corporates operate in debt to avoid paying tax. In debt, colleges sack people and close departments.

      They could have gone back to paper for a small percentage of this, and have had some resilience to ransomware.

      1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

        Re: I saw it up close

        Universities have admin staff for admin.

        Perhaps, but remember that most admin is completely unnecessary and exists solely to create work for administrators (thank you, Professor Parkinson).

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: I saw it up close

      "- I cannot say this loudly enough, as I see it time and again, if the UAT is overrunning, DELAY YOUR GO-LIVE. Don't stop testing and go-live anyway hoping it will all be OK. It won't. Someone has to fix all the testing issues you're now going to spot for the first time in Production, and while they do, someone else else isn't getting paid, with major impacts on their company, staff, livelihoods, etc.

      - Do not build immovable go-live dates into your programme, even if it's a response to missing a previous one. It's all very well to have a budget envelope and a hard stop to aim for, but what happens when you get there and it's not ready?"

      It's quite clear that Horizon faile by disregarding these two points.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I saw it up close

      "inexplicably delivered in landscape PowerPoint,"

      Because it's a lot easier to read on a typical computer screen especially in full screen mode than if formatted A4 portrait. Why would I want to call up said report on my computer, then throw it at a printer (that's likely to be B&W, so loses all colour coding on charts), and then faff around with a hard copy that'll be dog eared in two days, and in the bin in a week?

      I'd agree the Edinburgh report looks like it was done on Powerpoint, and would have benefited from the care of a competent designer, but the principle is good. I recently completed our annual report, it's a landscape PDF for those reasons, although we used a good designer to convert my ramblings and ambitions into a decent looking document.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I saw it up close

      - I cannot say this loudly enough, as I see it time and again, if the UAT is overrunning, DELAY YOUR GO-LIVE.

      The university I used to work for decided, some years ago, to implement a new system for managing tuition. I was asked to be part of the academic user feedback group. After one meeting the group was disbanded because the developers could not fix all the bugs we identified. A colleague of mine was given the job of managing the whole project. "It can't possibly work, can it?" I said. "No, they replied, "but we've been told it goes live in September, come what may.".

      It did go live in September, collapsed within a day and resulted in all teaching arrangements being made by had for over a year. Utter, complete, predictable chaos.

  20. Tron Silver badge

    Good software is invisible.

    You study your clients, you ask them what they want, you go back and build it, and you work with them on the fine detail. And by clients, I mean each and everyone who will use your system, not the twats in the expensive suits. You trial it alongside the original system to make sure it works. Then, when you roll it out as a replacement, your clients sit at their desks, turn on their systems and just use it.

    If you aren't doing that, you should return the cash you have pocketed, not ask for more.

    If you can't do that, get out of the business, because you are no bloody good at it.

    1. ghp

      Re: Good software is invisible.

      But that sounds like "made for measure", how oldskool. Is it still done, nowadays?

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anonymous for reasons. I have a good friend who works in the accounts department at Edinburgh Uni who has said repeatedly that the new system is a complete clusterfuck, worse than what is publicly acknowledged. The staff keep their heads down and do their 9-5 because if they raise their heads above the parapets they’ll get shot. Edinburgh Uni is a horrible place to work

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I have a friend who works for them. "Horrible place to work " seems to be putting it mildly. Pretty horrible place to study as well, as they have taken on huge numbers of extra students without increasing staff or facilities to teach them.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It will sadly never stop

    Having watched the horizon inquiry interviews on and off, its clear a lot of the problems were senior management at the Post Office wanting to "Save face" for Royal Mail so appeared to be lying to their own staff that the system was robust. You then end up with management like Elaine Cottam and investigators like Graham Ward (who should never work in security again).

    And, although not putting people in prison in this case, we see this across all companies and it needs to stop.

    Someone project manages a new system who's incompetent, ignores their own staff, tells staff "Everyone is replaceable" and yet another shit system gets installed. Currently seeing it at our place hence the anon. A guy has been promoted to a head of service role who's nowhere near qualified because of his past success at the organisation of grifting. The exec team are just as incompetent and using him as a buffer. Classic Peter Principle at work. I should really leave but comfortable because of the flex and no commute.

    The new system if flawed and although we are able to point out issues, the lie that its fine and just has "teething problems" continues.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: It will sadly never stop

      "And, although not putting people in prison in this case, we see this across all companies and it needs to stop."

      Putting a few of the actual people responsible in prison may be what it needs to make it stop.

      1. Lurko

        Re: It will sadly never stop

        "Putting a few of the actual people responsible in prison may be what it needs to make it stop."

        Our overcrowded prisons don't seem to be deterring the more regular classes of criminals, so I suspect the collective self-deception of all organisations will continue even if criminal penalties were available. When things go wrong all bureaucracies including big business simply redefine "wrong" as "right".

        And that is the lesson our political leaders teach every day.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It will sadly never stop

      You should use his full title: "Graham Ward - who now works for the Metropolitan Police"

      Cite: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68172203

  23. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Joke

    Oracle Fusion HR

    With a name like that, is it surprising that there were runaway costs and the project went into meltdown

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Oracle Fusion HR

      High Risk

  24. Christoph
    Trollface

    Why weren't they warned?

    Why didn't Edinburgh University's Koestler Parapsychology Unit warn them that this was going to happen?

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I just asked the senior (job title includes "Head") Edinburgh University staff member sitting opposite me and am assured that the system is still causing huge problems.

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