I once had a ran a web design project where we ended up having to use an agency we had used previously (who had mucked us about plenty). However due to the preferred agency not passing due diligence it became our only option.
However, I insisted on a 'watertight' spec for the site. It was only a smallish site, a total cost of less than £100k. The agency however started to be crap like usual and delays started, they didn't fix stuff until threatened with non-payment. The most comical bit though - part of our spec described a reporting function that was required. It had full details of the reports it had to produce. However 50% of the time it would fail as the report was too big and the code too slow that it timed out. They claimed, however, that the function had been built and produced reports as per the spec, however the spec never said that it had to work all the time, or even that it had to work. To make it work all the time would cost extra money!
In the end I spent a day looking at the code and realised they were just doing a SQL table grab from multiple tables and then joining and manipulating in server code. I managed to rewrite the SQL side to return the already joined data and push it back from a stored procedure - worked in about 100th of the time. I'm no DBA but the fact I could fix it in a short time compared to the months of wrangling over whether something being in the specs means it should also work seemed pointless.
The issues with these web projects is that the agencies work on a project at a specified 'day rate' per staff member. Your company wants a fixed price as you would never trust an open ended agreement to produce a product and then pay the cost at the end. As soon as the day rate total approaches or exceeds the fixed price agreed the account manager gets twitchy and starts cutting corners all over the place to produce the bare minimum rubbish. The project spirals downhill from there.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
