| I think there's only one that I'm comfortable talking about since it was long ago and the people involved have all moved on from their parent companies. Louis Vuitton was relaunching their public-facing website, which was tightly integrated with their back-end systems - inventory, manufacturing, etc. IOW, it wasn't just a regular website. They hired a consulting company here in Europe who sold them a solution that was the epitome of using the wrong tool for the job - it was a non-relational database solution for what was obviously a pretty traditional relational db application. (except the product content - images, movies, etc, had to be tied to their back-end db systems) Louis Vuitton rented out the Louvre for the launch party, hosted by the CEO. But no one took it upon themselves to let the CEO know that the rewrite would not be done in time for the launch. Not even close. The launch party happened but the new site wasn't ready. There was nothing to present at the launch. The CTO was fired of course. We were hired to help bring the project back on track along with a couple of other consulting companies - it was about 5 senior developers and a few dozen junior developers. However, the work was being done in France where the norm is to not work under pressure like what we had to do. And the senior consultants where all american, swiss, and german, and only one very good and amazing french developer. I spent most of my time working on politics and very little time developing. We managed to get some of the work away from the managing French company to be done by Swiss and German companies. And then I was transferred to another project with another desperate client. I was in Hyderabad a couple of years later and met the fired CTO at a party - he was starting a consulting company in India to provide consultants to Europe. Nice guy but meeting him made me understand why what happened happened. |
Did you all speak english? Did the swiss and french speak french sometimes?
Interesting dynamics.