Re: IT Services
IT service providers have only half the blame. I've consulted for a couple and seen how the process works. When they come into a business to bid they can only rely on what the company tells them their needs are. They can take inventories, ask questions, talk to people, etc. but there is always stuff the people at the company forget or don't think is important enough to mention. The service provider bases their bid on what they learn, and when the company later discovers all these "oh yeahs", what's the provider supposed to do, provide them free work above what the contract calls for? That's where a lot of the change orders / cost overruns come from, at least in the couple years.
Its worse of course though - the service provider wants to make the lowest bid and win the business, so they have incentive not to look TOO hard for stuff the company missed. The people at the company "helping" them with their due diligence also have incentive not to look too hard for stuff that's missed as well. Either they are the incumbent staff, who know some/most of them will be let go when the IT provider takes over, or they are employees of a different IT provider who know they will have to either transition to another client (and possibly have to relocate) or be let go. They have reason to want the incoming provider to fail miserably, as their way of saying "fuck you" as they go out the door.
This is why companies will often switch providers instead of renewing the one they have. They are upset about all the change orders they had to pay for in the first couple years to cover all the "oh yeahs". Again its worse though, because now the provider knows exactly what is entailed so their bid for extending the contract reflects the actual cost not the imaginary cost that left out all the "oh yeahs". It is pretty hard for a realistic bid to beat an imaginary bid, so unless the provider has a sterling reputation with the client (and if that's ever happened, I've never heard of it) the company will give the nod to the newcomer. Who will of course go through the whole change order business the first year or two because of all the stuff they missed / the former provider didn't work too hard to help them find!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
