Database grief

Summary

The outgoing director of a small organisation delivering care and welfare services spent £20,000 of reserves on a database project without analysing their needs or getting a formal contract with the developer.

The incoming director inherited a fatally flawed database that doesn’t meet the organisation’s needs.  Things go from bad to worse when the sole developer decides to leave the project to pursue a new career in a completely different field.

What happened?

Upgrading an old Access database to a modern web enabled database sounds like a great idea.  And the organisation thought it was getting a bargain when a volunteer with high end programming skills offered to take the project on as paid work.

However, things quickly went wrong when the outgoing director decided to push ahead with the project, trusting the database developer – an ex volunteer at the organisation – to decide what needed doing and how much it would cost.

The London regional ICT champion visited the organisation for a health check at the request of the new director.  The regional ICT champion found a £20,000 database unsuited to the organisation’s needs and little or no documentation beyond a vague email from the outgoing director to the developer giving the go-ahead. The organisation now had a new fileserver and some new computers, but little else to show where the money had gone.

On closer inspection the regional ICT champion found that the developer had decided on a high-end and expensive database solution more appropriate to a global business with thousands of employees around the world, not a small organisation of less than 10 staff.  According to staff, routine management reports either didn’t print, didn’t add up or were missing. When the champion visited the organisation, they found the staff having to manually count records off the screen!

At this point, the developer gave the organisation an ultimatum.  He believed he was still owed money for work done; said he would have to raise his prices to cover the additional burden of fixing errors; and that he would personally be unable to support the database beyond the next few months because he was taking up a different career.

The regional ICT champion recommended that the organisation dig out all documentation relating to the project – to resolve their dispute with the developer, and immediately evaluate whether the database could be salvaged at a reasonable cost or abandoned as an expensive folly.  After a lengthy evaluation the organisation decided to abandon the database

What difference has ICT made?

By failing to plan and manage the database project, the organisation made a number of costly mistakes.

  • Management and board oversight - a clear failure to take responsibility and understand the issues involved, leading to bad decisions at every stage and costly mistakes. Can your organisation afford to lose £20,000 on management incompetence?
  • Project scope and budget - this was effectively entrusted to the developer with no agreement on scope, timetable, deliverables or cost of the work.
  • Lack of staff buy in - staff were not involved in the project and saddled with a database that failed to meet the needs of the organisation.
  • Sole developer - working with a sole developer is a high risk strategy, especially if they decide to raise their prices or stop supporting the database.
  • Dispute - write it down and make sure everyone agrees to what is being done and how much it’s going to cost. Failure to do this always ends in tears.

What was learnt?

ICT projects - particularly databases - need careful managing with good decisions made at the start. This means analysing and understanding what is needed, budgeting, and getting everything agreed in writing.

  • Governance - the outgoing director and board clearly failed to take responsibility for planning and managing the project, and the result was £20,000 wasted on a database that didn't meet the organisation's needs.
  • Lack of analysis - the developer decided on a high end and expensive database solution inappropriate to the needs of a small organisation of less than 10 staff. Support for the developer's solution would also be hard to find and expensive.
  • Contracts and written documentation - there was no documentary evidence to explain the scope of the project agreed between the out-going director and the developer. There was also no audit trail to evidence how much had been spent on development.
  • License keys and installation discs - these are company property and should always be held by the organisation in case of dispute.

The organisation eventually abandoned the database and wrote the experience of as an expensive lesson in mismanagement. The organisation has since merged back into its parent organisation and has no involvement in technology decisions.

Find out more

Regional Champion

Miles Maier - London Regional Champion (Lasa)

Knowledgebase

 

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