VA CIO wants to end IT failures

A suggestion for Mr. Roger Baker would be to make sure the projects his organization is trying to impliment are based on real product capabilities. I have been managing infrastructure type projects for 19 years. The projects that have had problems and missed milestones are those that the vendor has never been required to prove that the product or service works as advertised. It has always been the case that the vendor has sold pre-release or future features that look good on paper and even in the contract. Without a major penalty to the supplier they will sell you the moon and then claim you were not listening to the exceptions.
If every project the VA was attempting to install was required to meet a proof of concept test period on more than a few hours to be accepted then the contracts can be cancelled and a new effort started with real acceptance criteria.
I have worked on many federal and state projects plus numerous private industry projects and the ones that fail are by and large projucts that can not perform the tasks or routine they advertise.
Mr. Baker if the product is a new wiz bang product solely to be used by the VA then make it a test project to see if it works not an all out implementation project that has never been tested.
As an independent project manager I generally get the call when internal resources have given up trying to make the project a success.
It is time to hit the vendors in the pocket book for non performance and non delivery of milestones.
So provo for you if you can make it happen!

Robert G Elia Jr.
Partner, Sr. Technical Project Manger
Systems Implementation Services, LLC