Ignore these specs immediately

Coordinating the activity of 30 different truck depots is no picnic — especially when management pays no attention to the plans it commissioned for a new system

We spent six months writing specifications, explaining how tanks were dedicated to specific products working for specific customers and highlighting where we could share resources. The project demanded lots of time and energy, but we were excited about it. So you can imagine our surprise when IT then dumped a second-hand general freight system into the mix, completely ignoring all the information we’d given them.

The result, after some £4 million spent (nearly bankrupting the company): one very slow delivery note printer in the corner of the office.

The inter-depot notification system could only work three days in advance (unlike the paper system, which of course was endless). Imagine the fun involved for some jobs that required three months in the planning!

My boss went ape when he couldn’t get his invoicing and management reports, basics which he’d previously obtained on a daily basis. We had all our (unofficial) PCs and paper systems formally removed as they were hindering “progress.” We couldn’t tell customers whether or not we could work for them more than three days ahead of time, which naturally left some folks less than enthusiastic about our service.

The system, costs now so high that all further work was abandoned, seriously obstructed the traffic office guys in trying to meet customer requirements. In an effort to share further development costs (read: complete re-write), the company looked for someone else to buy it.

Soon afterwards, I left the company. In an interview with a prospective employer, I had to call upon my best poker face when I was told, “We are so pleased to see you here today. Your old employer has such a marvelous computer system that we’ve bought it! We would love to use your knowledge to run it as efficiently as they did.”

Then again, maybe my reaction wasn’t as poker-faced as I’d hoped — I didn’t get the job.

The poor IT guy in charge died from stress, the computer division was sold off, the company was sold to a competitor, and I no longer work in logistics, which may be the only silver lining in this whole tale.