Saturday, July 10, 2010

Consultants and failed projects

Why are organisations paying a lot of money to consultants who delivered failed projects? Read this article for the answer.

My observation
I hear of government agencies and business organisations spending several tens of millions of dollars by engaging consultants, especially on IT mega-projects. Often, the projects do not produce the payback. But, it seems to be quite fashionable for these organisations to spend big bucks. They are able to get their money back by raising fees and charges on the consumers. This results in the high cost of living in Singapore.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The answer is pretty obvious.

When a certain local bank had a massive IT mis-adventure recently, it's pretty likely the vendor who is handling the bank's IT operations will have to accept responsibility.

The old English idiom is so delightful. It's called "falling on one's sword". This happens whenever a knight has failed to achieve the king's (paymaster) assigned role.

The blame has to fall somewhere. And surely you don't expect the king (paymaster) to take the blame.

Consultants are paid high fees for taking the blame when projects fail. Not for actual value of work accomplished.

Concerned said...

Why hire consultants to do the job when it should be done internally. Many of the executives who are hired to perform the job are not up to it or competent enough to do the job or too lazy to supervise the operation. So outsource it to a third party. Throw all the problems, trouble and headache to the third party. Sit down and have a more easy life.

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