So the BBC has spent £100 on trying to digitise its operations, something that far from providing a dose of schadenfreude, sends a shiver down the spine of those of us involved in the video digital management industry.
This is failure on a massive scale, but the reasons for the failure of such projects are common to many such initiatives.
Over-ambition - often called 'scope creep'. This is where a good idea becomes a big idea and everything, including the kitchen sink, are thrown in.
Not invented hereism - where companies build from scratch when off the shelf solutions exist. This also leads to:
Exceptionism - a company tries to fit a system to its working processes rather than thinking how both processes and technology can be streamlined.
Specification and management by committee - too many cooks invariably spoil the broth.
Not prototyping - start small and make small mistakes!
Lack of experience - at least try to use someone who has been there before: managing video data is totally different to managing financial data, for example.
At TVE we built and delivered a media asset management system for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad in three weeks and then amended it to the client's needs. A few weeks later it had been used to deliver over 30,000 media assets to over 212m viewers (according to a University of Liverpool study).