Failure to Learn

It is deeply frustrating, the Gorse Fox has concluded.

The project with which he is working has been running for over a year, and GF was involved when it was first being set up. At that time he worked with a colleague to define the basic process and information flow that would see the project from conception to completion. Part of this was a definition of the various documents that would be needed along the way - documents that described what was in place, was to be built, how things would be built, how things would be tested, how data would be moved, and so forth. The outcome of this work was that another colleague created a checklist of all of these documents and which parts of the project were responsible for each.

Starting his review, GF returned to this list. It soon became clear that it has essentially been ignored. Few, if any, of the documents have been written - and the project has forged its own path. This is a path that appears to be littered with management information, run rates, and statistics - and almost no design artefacts.