Prepared by Sufiyan Ghori

The Failure of the FBIs Virtual Case File Proje

Prepared by Sufiyan Ghori

ct Case Study
Initial Plan for the Project
In September 2000, the FBI announced the "Trilogy" program, intended to modernize the bureau's outdated Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. The project had three parts, 1. Upgrading software and hardware for FBI agents by purchasing modern desktop computers for all FBI offices. 2. Upgrading the FBIs communications network by developing secure highperformance WAN and LAN networks, and modernizing the FBI's suite of investigative software applications. 3. Significantly upgrading the FBIs case management system (Virtual Case File) to enable better access to, and sharing of, case-related information across the FBI. The project was originally scheduled to take three years and estimated cost was around US$170 million.

Project Description
Virtual Case File (or VCF) was a software application developed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the project was originally scheduled to take three years but had failed after 4 years with requirements still not met. Aforementioned the project had three goals: purchasing modern
Prepared by Sufiyan Ghori

desktop computers for all FBI offices, developing secure high-performance WAN and LAN networks, and modernizing the FBI's suite of investigative software applications. The first two goals of Trilogy were generally successful. However, the project still experienced major cost and schedule overruns and never achieved its objectives. The project was officially abandoned in January 2005, and cost the federal government nearly $104.5million. It is widely used as an example of a failed Engineering and poorly Managed project.

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Reasons for Failure

Lack of Planning
The three years estimation and scheduling for the Virtual Case File project focused on what was desired, not what was possible with the resources available. This clearly suggests that the project lack on planning since the estimation, requirements were not properly planned. The quote from the report illustrates this: We did not have a complete set of defined requirements when the original contract was signed in June 2001. Also there was no baseline architecture, baseline master schedule, no detailed description of the FBI's IT processes, no method of measuring progress to plan other than the passage of time and the consumption of funding.

Lack of Technical & Management Skills

The FBI lacked skill sets in their personnel such as qualified software engineering, program management, and contract management. They also experienced a high turnover in Trilogy program managers and Chief Information Officers. The Management has a motto that you don't have to be technical to manage Engineers and

Developers, so the career track for technically competent people is cut off.

Lack of Communication Skills

To run a successful project you need to succeed in a host of areas. Its not just about the triple constraint of cost, schedules and resources. You need to get the people and communications aspects right too. Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) said that the communication with FBI was difficult because of the high turnover of top IT managers.

Scope creep
Its perhaps inappropriate to use the term scope creep for a project where scope is never clearly defined. According to one report on the project. Trilogys scope grew by about 80 percent since initiation of the project. Of course, if scope is increasing faster than work is being complete, it will be impossible for any project to be finished.

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Different approaches of the Contractors

The two prime contractors - SAIC and DynCorp provided the software and hardware for the contract. One (SAIC) used an iterative delivery method (spiral, which is common in the defense community), while DynCorp approached the work with little or no detailed planning. This was another reason for this massive failure.

Inexperienced Teams Members

Many FBI Personnel who had little or no formal training in computer science as managers and even engineers were hired for the project, The contract was based on hours worked -- cost plus an award fee, the amount of $125 an hour had been paid to contractors who had just graduated from high school and had no prior experience of working on such a massive project.

Projects Fail in the Requirements Phase

When a project fails, execution is usually blamed. The truth is that failed projects fail much earlier than thatin requirements. Requirements failures can take many forms, including: No written requirements Constantly changing requirements Requirements that specify how instead of what The last two items describes the projects requirements failure. The 800+ page document described web pages, form button captions, and logos instead of what the system needed to do.

LESSON LEARNED FROM THE FAILURE

Have the Right People in the Right Roles The Project Manager had never led a project before. Special Agent Larry Depew was selected to lead this project because of his experience building a personal database (FoxPro) to support his investigations. Not that this experience had no value, but his project management experience in the technical domain was zero.

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Delivering Earlier Means Dropping Features

When you combine ambition beyond available resources with shorter deadlines, disaster is virtual certainty. When SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) agreed to deliver six months earlier than initially agreed, that should have been contingent on dropping certain features. Instead, they tried to deliver everything by having eight teams work in parallel. This meant integration of the individual components would have to be nearly flawlessa dubious proposition at best.

Buy or Borrow Before You Build Particularly in the face of deadline pressure, it is vital that development buy existing components (or use open source) and integrate them wherever practical instead of building everything from scratch.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FAILURE?

Due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 the FBI was under intense pressure to get a product out to the FBI agents so they could better investigate the case which is the major reason of all the problems caused at the initial stage, this includes the lack of skillful team members, lack of proper management, lack of planning etc. This was also admitted by Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and he said, The FBI and the contractors shared the blame.

SUMMARY
I can eventually conclude that the project was a disaster, and the $170 million project was canceled for a loss of $104.5 million for various reasons account for the delays and associated cost increases in the Trilogy project, which can be summarize as follows:

poorly defined and slowly evolving design requirements, contracting weaknesses, IT investment management weaknesses, unrealistic scheduling of tasks poor and inappropriate management

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REACTION OF THE FAILURE

On Feb. 3, 2005, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, appeared before a Senate subcommittee to explain how the FBI had managed to waste US$104.5 million. Standing before the Senate and telling them youve wasted $104.5 million of taxpayers money is no place to be.

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REFERENCES:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. http://calleam.com/WTPF/?p=1964 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Case_File http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/fbi.computers http://www.scribd.com/doc/18761940/Virtual-Case-File http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/fbis-virtual-case-file-system http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/who-killed-the-virtual-case-file http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/anatomy-it-disaster-how-fbi-blew-it-243 http://www.slideshare.net/Ahmed_Coucha/who-killed-the-virtual-case-file-case-analysis http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081701485.html

Prepared by Sufiyan Ghori