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7, 10 year software implementations a success? That speaks for itself. But that’s the perspective of the implementers who continue to milk that cow, and not the customers who have committed to feed that animal and can’t back off. I have seen it too, have seen the cynicism and opportunism of the consultants, have seen good vice presidents of companies fired and replaced by none other than these consultants, and have seen one company go under as a result of the cynicism and opportunism of software sellers.

(finished too early)

... as a result of the cynicism and opportunism of software sellers who committed to delivering in 6 months and took years and years, and never fully delivered and completed.

It is a racket, and the biggest of all companies which produce corporate software has been known for 30 years not for the quality of its products but for the aggressiveness of its sales force.

7, 10 year software implementations a success?

Yes, if the software ends up in production, is fully operational, on schedule and at a reasonable, on-budget cost, its a success.

We're talking enterprise-level SAP implementation for multi-billion dollar companies using an incremental approach. It doesn't mean that the first module that was rolled out is still the same version when the last module rolls out as it was when the process started.

And again that's with an incremental rollout. I know of organizations that are going an "evolve" approach where they have 20-year growth plans for their current home-grown software.

Sebielus has said that healthcare.gov should have taken five years with two years of testing. I find that to be actually ... reasonable ... for an effort of this size and scope. The problem is that the software was rushed in to meet an arbitrary deadline to meet a very complex business need/model that hadn't been defined yet (consistent with the whole "pass it to see what's in it" approach to the business model itself).