What are the Worst Software Project Failures Ever?

Posted by Warren P on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Warren P
Published on 2009-06-24T19:11:17Z Indexed on 2010/04/17 14:53 UTC
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Is there a good list of "worst software project failures ever" in the history of software development?

For example in Canada a "gun registry" project spent around two billion dollars.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_registry).

This is of course, insane, even if the final product "sort of worked".

I have heard of an FBI Case file system which there have been several attempts to rewrite, all of them so far, failures.

There is a book on the subject (Software Runaways). There doesn't seem to be be a software "boondoggle" list or "fiasco" list on Wikipedia that I can see.

(Update: Therac-25 would be the 'winner' of this question, except that I was internally thinking more of Software projects that had as their deliverable, mainly software, as opposed to firmware projects like Therac-25, where the hardware and firmware together are capable of killing people. In terms of pure software monetary debacles, which was my intended question, there are several contenders.)

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