Ask HN: Would you back out on a poor product after a significant investment?

1 pointsGeenirvana6y ago1 comments

The business I work for, has decided to invest in a complicated solution to meet our ever demanding customer requirements. We took advise from our ERP provider as the solution that we need must integrate tightly and we still need to use our ERP support for issues. We did look elsewhere but we felt a solution with backing from our ERP provider would be beneficial.

For the project to succeed, the business required to invest in two different types of semi-bespoke software, new hardware and a complete Wi-Fi infastructure change.

7 months into the project, a significant cost and many man hours of myself and consultants we have found the solution advised to us is not meeting our requirements. Some of this is because the way the business runs and some of this is because the company making of of the pieces of software is doing a really poor job.

The last consultant that arrived had an unbiased opinion on a different company who could do exactly what we required.

Would backing away and looking elsewhere for a solution be a wise idea?

The working software solution and the Wi-Fi could be carried forward, but the troublesome software and it's hardware would essentially be lost.

For the record, I have recommended to stay with the problematic software. The company developing it has promised they can deliver and I really can't tell the business owners that their money has gone to waste

1 comments

DjGilcrease6y ago

Don't tell the Owners their money went to waste, but explain to them exactly what you posted here and let them decide to chase the sunk cost fallacy or not.

Without knowing more about the exact nature of the problems with the software you are having I cannot make a recommendation either way from a software development perspective.

I will however say many consulting development companies will continue to promise they will deliver while continually bringing in change orders to the original statement of work "Because 'this' situation was not covered in the original SOW"

If you find the company doing more then 1, maybe 2, small change orders as things evolve in a project of 9-12 months I would just drop them as that tells me they did not properly study the problem and ask the correct questions in order to properly do a SOW, that is unless things in the project are actually changing rapidly / dramatically from the original RFP.

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