Читать книгу Beginning Programming All-in-One For Dummies - Wallace Wang - Страница 14

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had a problem. It had so much information, stored on paper, scattered among so many agents around the country that finding and using this information was nearly impossible. One agent might have vital information that could help a second agent crack a case, but unless those two agents knew what each other had, that information might as well never have existed in the first place.

So, the FBI had a bright idea: Create a computer program that would allow agents to store and share information through the computer. Several years and $170 million later, the FBI had its program, dubbed Virtual Case File, which consisted of more than 700,000 lines of error-prone commands that never even worked. Rather than try to salvage the project, the FBI decided it was easier just to cancel the whole thing and basically flush 170 million taxpayer dollars down the drain.

What went wrong? Although many factors contributed to the project’s failure, one reason stands out in particular: According to an audit of the program conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, a prime cause for failure was “poorly defined and slowly evolving design requirements.” In other words, the FBI never knew exactly what it wanted the program to do.

How can you aim at a target if you don’t know what it is? You can’t. Or you can try, just as long as you spend $170 million to discover that if you don’t know what you want, you’re probably never going to get it.