The failure of the License Application Mitigation Project (LAMP):

Background:

The License Application Mitigation Project (LAMP) is one of the most famous IT project failures. This project was started in 1990 by the state of Washington. Its goal was to automate the state's vehicle registration and license renewal processes. Initially, the project was supposed to cost $16 million over five years. However, in 1992, the projected costs had climbed to $41.8 million, $51 million in 1993. It was lats estimated at $67,5 million in 1997. Finally, it became clear that the costs of installing the system were out of control. And, even if the project were completed, it would continue to be a huge and costly waste of money.

LAMP was turned off in 1997 after legislators calculated that this new system would cost six times as much to run every year as the system it was replacing.

It was estimated that nearly $40 million had been wasted in this project.

What reasons could lead to this failure?

Problems:

The project’s failure stems from three main problems:

1) Management of the scope:

LAMP’s undertaking and expectations were very high. This was a very big concept which had very few intermediary deliverables. According to George Lindamood, the director of the state's IS department from 1993, "the project should have been broken down into smaller, measurable chunks, rather than spread out over several years.” Moreover, the requirements were constantly changed during the course of the project. For instance, after Lindamood left, legislators passed new licensing and registration laws that altered the project scope and caused further delays.

2) Split of the project between in-house developers and a private industry contractor:

By design, LAMP tasks were inexplicably divided between in-house developers and an external company. This led to communication problems and poor coordination. This is one of the reasons why LAMP faced so many delays.

3) Bad project management:

The chief issue about management was administrative meddling. From authorization to purchasing and quality assurance, LAMP was overseen by a mix of elected officials and political appointees. Not only these officials and politicians were not technically knowledgeable about the project, but LAMP was not a priority in their agenda. Experienced personnel should have been hired from private industry and empowered upfront, as opposed to putting political appointees in charge during the project.

The other management issue was that the organization didn’t want to hear that the project was a failure. The signs of failure for this project were evident from the first two years. Yet, no action or initiatives were taken to prevent this failure from happening. Project management should have identified and taken the following actions:

-Recognize and admit the symptoms of failures.

-Accurately identify what is going wrong in the project.

-Select suitable means of handling the situation, be it cancelling the project before costs become so huge.

What we can learn from this failure:

The chief lesson to learn from LAMP failure is that when a project is obviously doomed to failure, get out sooner rather than later!

Sources:

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=E38554CD-17A4-0F78-3158BDA5AC9294E6

http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/seoc2/2004_2005/slides/failures.pdf

http://www.cio.com.au/article/108289/managing_--_hell_back_/

http://infocommodity.blogspot.com/

Lucie BIENVENU