malachy4

I'd hoped for some interesting debate about the subject of SIMS development and how it affects customers, but it seems that isn't going to happen. Most of the respondents appear to be loyal SIMS devotees, which is fair enough. There is one thing I must clear up, though:- I was not suggesting for a moment that it's the developers who are not up to scratch. They do a grand job in difficult circumstances and some are among the brightest I've worked with in 20 yrs of IT industry experience. Adios, then. I shall keep my views to myself from now on. Phil - if you're reading this, rest assured that I bear you and SIMS no malice - I was just after some sport

I've been too busy being professional to spend much time on Edugeek since my post Agree that they are probably no worse than a lot of organisations, but the sad thing is that they simply are not learning from years of the same problems repeating over and over again. People (like me) do try to introduce greater control to improve the quality and reliability of deliveries, but the aggressive profit targets set by "Big" Capita are the top priority, so they will never make the required investment in time and people. Every release is a panic of fixes and a battle between the Product Managers and the development teams. When it is inevitably late, little consideration is made for the impact on the next release. So teams are constantly playing catchup - and with no money for extra resources, the things that suffer are quality and functionality.

I used to work in the Development team for Capita/SIMS and I can assure you that they do not follow anything like industry standard software release controls. They are building on sand with software that has been consistently rushed into market and/or fixed with sticking plaster and they are not willing to invest in getting it right. They try to do far too much for every release, with not enough investment in supporting their people and way too little process discipline. It's astonishing that they only have to re-release once or twice each time. The people there are great and they bust themselves trying to get it right in the forced timescales, but the management are simply milking the business, the staff (and the customers) for all they are worth. How many times have you been promised functionality or a release only to find it is delayed or faulty - often at the last minute? They make promises they cannot keep because they do not consult the people who will be doing the work and trying to work out what the heck the answer is!