> Phoenix project executives believed they could deliver a modernized payment system, customizing PeopleSoft’s off-the-shelf payroll package to follow 80,000 pay rules spanning 105 collective agreements with federal public-service unions.

Somehow I come away skeptical of the inevitable conclusion that Phoenix was doomed to fail and instead that perhaps they were hamstrung by architecture constraints dictated by assholes.

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QuercusMax 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Wasn't the Agile movement kicked off by a group of people writing payroll software for Chrysler?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens...

Payroll systems seem to be a massively complicated beast.

	▲	array_key_first 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Arbitrary payroll is absurdly complicated. The trick is to not make it arbitrary - have a limited amount of stuff you do, and always have backdoors to manually pushing data through payroll.
	▲	franktankbank 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You don't want to get me started on Agile.

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ruralfam 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My reaction also. 80K payroll rules!!! Without much prompt effort, I got about 350K Canada Federal Service employees (sorry if not correct).

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dmix 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Sounds like they put zero effort into simplifying those rules the first time around.

Now in the new project they put together a committee to attempt it

> The main objective of this committee also includes simplifying the pay rules for public servants, in order to reduce the complexity of the development of Phoenix's replacement. This complexity of the current pay rules is a result of "negotiated rules for pay and benefits over 60 years that are specific to each of over 80 occupational groups in the public service." making it difficult to develop a single solution which can handle each occupational groups specific needs.

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stackskipton 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have worked on government payroll systems, simplifying those rules is almost impossible from political PoV. They are generally a combo of weird laws, court cases, union contracts and more.

Any time you think about touching them, the people who get those salaries come out in droves and no one else cares so government has every incentive to leave them alone.

	▲	tehjoker 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You could simplify them if you made sure the people getting them got overall more money ;) The government doesn't want to do that though.

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franktankbank 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh great a committee!

	▲	AndrewDucker 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Committees are how you discover what the problems are and agree solutions. No single person is going to understand all of the history and legality involved, or be able to represent the people on all sides of this mess. Yes, this means discussion, investigation, almost certainly months of effort to find something that works, and lots of compromise. That's how adults deal with complex situations.