Pat Weaver points us to a piece about a law suite in Scotland between a Call Center and EDS. EDS was held liable for damages due to failure to deliver on the contract for a CRM system. There is an interesting paragraph late in judgment documents.
As to the alleged misrepresentations as to time prior to the selection of EDS and the Letter of Intent, EDS represented that they had carried out a proper analysis of the amount of elapsed time needed to complete the initial delivery and go-live of the contact centre and that they held the opinion that, and had reasonable grounds for holding the opinion that they could and would deliver the project within the timescales referred to in the Response. That representation was false as there was no "proper analysis" nor were there "reasonable grounds". It was made dishonestly by Joe Galloway who knew it to be false. In making the misrepresentation, EDS intended Sky to rely on it and to select EDS for the Sky CRM Project and Sky did so. Accordingly, EDS are liable to Sky in deceit for that misrepresentation.
When some speak of all the overhead and extra steps of Software Development Lifecycle and more so to the government process built on top of those, I get a smile. While most programs we work are in trouble in some way, the processes and tools are in place to expose these types of problems.
