The Next Leap in Productivity: What Top Managers Really Need to Know about Information Technology

1.13. Plunging into Crisis

As many residents of California already know, the Los Angeles Unified School District experienced a meltdown of its new $95 million payroll system. Los Angeles Times reporter Joel Rubin wrote this vivid description of the mess:

... [C]onsultants hired to implement the system urged the district to proceed as scheduled in early January 2007...they urged the district in a report to "Go! Proceed...and go-live on January 1!"

Go live they did, plunging the district into a crisis from which it is only now emerging. Over the course of last year, taxpayers overpaid an estimated $53 million to some 36,000 teachers and others, while thousands more went underpaid or not paid at all for months.

Marla Eby, director of communications for the teachers' union, told blogger Michael Krigsman that while the old payroll system was complex, it did work. The new system, she told Krigsman, "was rolled out too quickly, and without sufficient testing. The union requested that the system be run in parallel prior to full rollout, to ensure these problems would not occur. The school district chose not to follow this advice for budget reasons, which is ironic given all the cost overruns now."

In a better world, the school district's new payroll system would have been thoroughly tested before going live. After going live, the system would have been subjected to continuous testing. When problems surfaced, modifications would have been created, tested, and dropped into place seamlessly. ...