Key lesson from the NPfIT - The Tony Collins Blog

ComputerWorldUK.com

Key lesson from the NPfIT - The Tony Collins Blog

Listening to critics is critical to the success of big projects. But has this lesson been learnt?

Published 07:56, 20 May 11

A US doctor Scot Silverstein, who has an expertise in clinical IT design, says of the NAO report on the NPfIT that the initials should stand for: "National Programme of Failed IT.”

He says on the blog Health Care Renewal:

"Perhaps the NPfIT (National Programme for IT in the NHS) should be renamed the "National Programme of Failed IT in the NHS." No new acronym will be needed.

Read the entire ComputerWorldUK piece by Tony Collins. Some of the excuses and rationalizations described during this programme are simply stunning.

This idea, though, I find fascinating:

One of the lessons that emerges from disastrous business decisions, as recorded on the excellent BBC2 series "Business Nightmares" with Evan Davis, is that expensive new ideas should be tested, and repeatedly tested, by the harshest critics of those ideas.

-- SS