Category Archives: system development

Technical debt: like financial debt, yet not quite

Debts arise when you spend more than you can afford. Furthermore, debts grow by itself: they come with an interest rate. Debts do not have to be a problem, as long as they are temporary, and as long as you have the means to pay them back. Because this is the number 1 characteristic of debts: they need to be paid back, one day or another. If you can’t pay them back at the moment when you have to, this…
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Why Dutch governmental ICT projects fail

Quite frequently, articles appear in the Dutch press about problematic ICT projects of Dutch governmental bodies. Budgets that get seriously out of hand, time schedules that are exceeded by years, products that do not meet expectations. Recent examples of projects that can be characterized as very problematic are the SPEER project for the Dutch ministry of Defense (estimates of expenses on this project go as high as 1 billion euros, the project should be finished in 2009, is still going…
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