Just to show it’s not just the British government that doesn’t seem to handle projects well, I thought I’d post a quick story about the FBI’s new case management system.

While it is currently ‘only’ expected to be $26 million over budget and 6 months late, it is also a replacement project for one that cost $170 million that was abandoned as it was “obsolete and riddled with problems” – so not quite so good.  However, scrapping a project which isn’t going to deliver what you need (instead of letting it drift onwards, not wanting to take the hit for stopping it) is actually good project management, so the FBI get points for that.

Unfortunately, the Justice Department’s inspector general’s report (PDF) says the FBI:

“needs to improve the risk management process it uses to identify, monitor, control and mitigate risks before they negatively affect [the project’s] cost, schedule and performance”.