1/12
Just heard of a utilities government company that is going bankrupt after their IT arm went all-in on Scrum and SAFe, rewrote a billing system, and that billing system got delayed long enough that they could not collect revenue, and ran out of money.
Oh man.
2/12
(It's Waternet in the Netherlands. Getting more details as this could have impact on over 1 million households in Amsterdam. Pretty wild)
3/12
"No one got fired for choosing SAFe" vs "SAFe will not save you when you are not competent enough to do decent work"
4/12
Yes main issue seemed to be the full rewrite.
Just heard how much time and effort this place spent on the SAFe transformation.
It sounds like they focused on the nonimportant stuff (process), and not the important thing (keep operating & collect money)
5/12
This is what I have heard so far. #2 and #3 is public information, #1 I collected from someone formerly at the company
6/12
Holy moly: a 6-year outage?!!
Invoicing sytem migration started to go wrong in 2020, and expected clearing of arrears will take till 2026, as per an article a year ago.
I have too many questions. This makes no sense... Translation from this article:
Directeur krijgt it-lek niet boven bij Waternet - Computable.nl
7/12
It's just hard for me to imagine people in a room going
"So, we have a problem with our invoicing system. We are not invoicing people on time, or correct. But we have a fix in sight."
"Okay, how long?"
"6 years."
"Midway we'll go bankrupt. But please proceed like that."
8/12
“What is arrears?” It’s a term for money owed but not paid. For most businesses it’s about money customers refused / evaded paying.
For this utilities company: it’s money they failed to invoice for years (that ppl would pay!), despite this failure bankrupting them.
An example:
9/12
Thank you! Yes, a few people shared how they got 2021 water bills in 2023. So sounds like a 1-2 year-long delay in sending out 2021 water bills...
10/12
Right? SO frustrating when it's about actually important/critical stuff (utilities) vs commercial (showing more ads etc)
Commercial still gets things more right than not in terms of reliabbility, thanks to the very clear monetary pressure and competition taking away customers
11/12
The details I gathered is Waternet went ahead with a full billing system rewrite. That rewrite got delayed, was buggy and they couldn't collect money due.
Some ppl I know got collections notices for 2021 fees in 2023 (that was just not collected from them, not even notified)
12/12
In this case, billing (invoicing) IS a big part of their core business! They need to calculate the water bill for each resident based on regulations and other input. I think ~1.4M local households. This is a water utility provider.
To post tweets in this format, more info here: https://www.thecoli.com/threads/tips-and-tricks-for-posting-the-coli-megathread.984734/post-52211196
Just heard of a utilities government company that is going bankrupt after their IT arm went all-in on Scrum and SAFe, rewrote a billing system, and that billing system got delayed long enough that they could not collect revenue, and ran out of money.
Oh man.
2/12
(It's Waternet in the Netherlands. Getting more details as this could have impact on over 1 million households in Amsterdam. Pretty wild)
3/12
"No one got fired for choosing SAFe" vs "SAFe will not save you when you are not competent enough to do decent work"
4/12
Yes main issue seemed to be the full rewrite.
Just heard how much time and effort this place spent on the SAFe transformation.
It sounds like they focused on the nonimportant stuff (process), and not the important thing (keep operating & collect money)
5/12
This is what I have heard so far. #2 and #3 is public information, #1 I collected from someone formerly at the company
6/12
Holy moly: a 6-year outage?!!
Invoicing sytem migration started to go wrong in 2020, and expected clearing of arrears will take till 2026, as per an article a year ago.
I have too many questions. This makes no sense... Translation from this article:
Directeur krijgt it-lek niet boven bij Waternet - Computable.nl
7/12
It's just hard for me to imagine people in a room going
"So, we have a problem with our invoicing system. We are not invoicing people on time, or correct. But we have a fix in sight."
"Okay, how long?"
"6 years."
"Midway we'll go bankrupt. But please proceed like that."
8/12
“What is arrears?” It’s a term for money owed but not paid. For most businesses it’s about money customers refused / evaded paying.
For this utilities company: it’s money they failed to invoice for years (that ppl would pay!), despite this failure bankrupting them.
An example:
9/12
Thank you! Yes, a few people shared how they got 2021 water bills in 2023. So sounds like a 1-2 year-long delay in sending out 2021 water bills...
10/12
Right? SO frustrating when it's about actually important/critical stuff (utilities) vs commercial (showing more ads etc)
Commercial still gets things more right than not in terms of reliabbility, thanks to the very clear monetary pressure and competition taking away customers
11/12
The details I gathered is Waternet went ahead with a full billing system rewrite. That rewrite got delayed, was buggy and they couldn't collect money due.
Some ppl I know got collections notices for 2021 fees in 2023 (that was just not collected from them, not even notified)
12/12
In this case, billing (invoicing) IS a big part of their core business! They need to calculate the water bill for each resident based on regulations and other input. I think ~1.4M local households. This is a water utility provider.
To post tweets in this format, more info here: https://www.thecoli.com/threads/tips-and-tricks-for-posting-the-coli-megathread.984734/post-52211196
. Dude was retired and just driving uber on the side. AsI said before,I struggled understanding a single word he said, shyt was wild. The bay area is something else.
