The more than 40-page report, after stripping away the Congressional finger pointing, should be a must-read for any organization embarking on an ERP implementation. The report sheds light on critical ERP implementation lessons to learn, and has some great recommendations - and one doesn't need to spend $1bn to find out. This massive exercise in project mismanagement and the final report were paid for by the US taxpayer!

There are some problems that doomed the ECSS project:

• Cultural Resistance to Change - The Air Force culture includes users who “refused to accommodate new ways of performing their day-to-day-tasks.” The Air Force personnel were to use COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) products from Oracle, IFS, and Click Commerce and leverage industry best practices. According to the report, the Air Force resisted changing business processes and requested CSC customize the software.

• Lack of Leadership During Project - There was no individual in the Air Force chain of command responsible and accountable for the project from start to finish. There were some five program executive officers over the course of the program. The lack of leadership meant that business process changes were not effectively pushed across the organization.

• Inadequate Mitigation of Risks - Though these problems were identified early on in the program (circa 2004) when conducting a risk management analysis, the risk mitigation strategy was deemed to be “woefully inadequate” even by the U.S. congressional committee.

Other items exposed in the report read like they are out of a software implementation 101 article. For example, there was no defined scope.

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