Litigation Support
I provide litigation support for the legal profession and for in-house counsel of technology and other companies. The specific services focus on technology strategy mis-alignment, large technology project failures, and intellectual property (IP) disputes. Much of this work involves major technology project failures where poor advice may have been given or when implementation efforts fell short.
Unfortunately, many technology investment decisions are made on less than perfect information. More often than not, there are as many intangible variables as tangible ones. Keep in mind that the Gartner Group actually reported that over 75% of all major software projects fail. According to recent benchmarking research:
On average, US companies spend over $9,000 per year, per employee on computing and communications technology and support; on the high end there are companies that actually spend over $22,000 per year, per employee on technology: one study reported that some companies spend upwards of $38,000 per year, per employee on technology …
CIO Magazine reported that companies waste $78 billion a year on failed software projects …
PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that over the past 25 years the number of failed technology projects that resulted in litigation has grown dramatically, with 48% resulting from warranty breaches, 13% from fraud, 11% from breach of contract, 9% from negligence and 7% from misrepresentation, among other problems …
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that software bugs cost the U.S. economy almost $60 billion a year …
The numbers are staggering. Some argue that technology is complicated especially when applied to ill-defined business models. I’d argue that our understanding of technology is too often both unfinished and unprofessional. We’ve been conditioned to think about technology as a silo - and we’ve managed it accordingly. Many companies still have “systems divisions” or “technology groups,” when they should do whatever they can do tear the silos down and rebuild integrated business technology organizations and processes. We’re “unprofessional” because we don’t do nearly enough due diligence around technology investments, don’t know how to measure ROI, and still make major technology decisions on the basis of incomplete and highly politicized information.
Support here involves simplifying complicated technical concepts, methods and tools, interviewing fact witnesses, and distilling huge amounts of documentation into a diagnostic insight.