1) What problems do you see emerging from a project such as SBInet where the government allows the contractor to determine scope, manage all contractor relations, and decide how to share project status information with oversight bodies?
2) Consider the following two arguments: “The failure of SBInet was due to poor scope management,” versus “SBInet failed because of poor oversight and project controls.” Take one side or the other in this argument, and justify your response.
The Virtual Fence project, cancelled in early 2011 by the Federal government, is a true story of a project that sounded better than it could ever be due to technical problems, unreasonable or overly-optimistic projections, and a general lack of understanding of the sheer size of the required effort. Boeing was given carte blanche to run the project, with governmental oversight notably absent from the decisions regarding vendor selection, technical requirements, and first phase development. In short, the Federal government signed a blank check to Boeing for initial development and then discovered that real costs were projected to be much higher. The project was cancelled when Boeing began failing technical capability tests on initial sections of the virtual fence.