United axes troubled baggage system at Denver airport

For all those who have cursed the baggage system at the Denver airport, here is welcome news:

Computerworld coverage

There are some interesting nuggets of information in this story for those of us who work on large projects - like...

Bruce Webster, principal of Webster & Associates LLC, a Washington-based consulting company that works with companies on troubled IT projects, said the decision by United came years too late. "There are a few lessons that large companies just don't seem to learn," he said. "The first lesson is that the best way to build a large, complex system is to evolve it from a small system that works. No one bothered to get a small system up and running in the first place -- they went for the big bang."

But "once the system gets to a certain point," he said, "there is an attitude that the project is too big to fail, that 'we have to make it work now.' There is an unwillingness in upper management to believe that things are as bad as they are."

Now that cuts waaay too close to home...