Dear IRD: how to shave $1b from your $1.5b software spendup
Xero has spent around only $80 million getting to where it is today. Even if IRD was 10x Xero (it’s not) why isn’t $800 million a reasonable number?
Playing devil’s advocate, if Xero fails, it’s not the end of the world. IRD on the other hand has a lot of ass to cover as recent (and no doubt repeated) debacles have shown. Rather than do it on the cheap (Novopay) the hope is that 1.5B will insulate one from humiliation. Yes, there is still that much sweet naïveté in the world.
Doing massive projects delivered over multiple years is counter to the interactive, early and frequent delivery approach modern software projects use to de-risk and deliver value early.
Break it up, publish interfaces, stand back. But they won’t and five times the budget will be less than what they spend.