Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Project Overview 3 The key issues related to the failure of the project: 4 Resolution 4 Relevance to IT Project Management: 5 Key Takeaways: 7 Research Approach 7 References 8
Executive Summary:
The “Who Killed the Virtual Case File?” case study is a clear example of project failure which resulted on not only balloon the cost of the project, but also loss that could be counted on millions of dollars. Because of the size of the project and the failure of the project, it is broadly used to prevent future IT Project Management disasters.
Project Overview:
When special agent Larry Depew collected evidence of illegal activity of the Russian and Italian mafia tax skim activity, FBI didn’t have database system, which could organize and support all the information gathering processes that were needed for the organization. A decade later, Depew was landed in his first project management job called FBI Virtual Case File project (VCF), even though he had no previous experience. In the PMBOK Guide book describes what abilities a project manager should possess to successfully manage projects is: knowledge, performance and personal . In the results of lack of experience and ineffective planning the project was unfortunate failure.
Because of availability of funds, the FBI’s 23 divisions developed own database system for each of the different divisions. In the result FBI ended up with 45-50 different investigative databases and applications, which are not communicating with each other. Also, the Automated Case Support (ACS) system was cumbersome to use, inefficient and had limited functional capabilities. Additionally all 13000 were really old which resulted in not supporting new software’s. Intranet that connected FBI offices had 56-kilobit-per second modems.
SAIC (Applications International Corp.) for software developed delivered 700,000 lines of code bug-ridden, off target
References: