Who will fix our Internal Banking Mess? TSB hires IBM amid online banking woes

Re: I pity the poor schmoes working on this.

Anonymous Coward is spot on. A former colleague of mine is caught up in the middle of this, having joined Sabadell recently in a QA role, and reports that people are pulling seriously illegal amounts of overtime and staying awake with the aid of pills and Bolivian marching powder.

Re: I pity the poor schmoes working on this.

"Even if the problem was caused by management ignoring advice from techies, it'll still be the techies fault ... somehow."

Space Shuttle. O-rings.

You'd think those who don't know how things work would have seen that one as a Really Big Wake-Up and would now be paying attention to those who do Know Things.

Or am I expecting too much from Admin and Management Plonks?

Re: What are IBM going to do? Wave a fucking magic wand?

There are a lot of people in this thread who are jumping to some remarkable conclusions.

A couple of disclaimers - I have no inside info here, and I once worked for IBM (left a few years back).

Everyone here's pointing the finger at TSB and their new owners here but the reality is most likely that this is all a great example of the evils of lock-in, which can be entirely attributed to Lloyds. There is a lot of IBM presence in that bank and they are very dependent on overpaid contractors to keep it running, along with oodles of offshore bollocks.

My guess (and it is admittedly a guess, although I hope an educated one), is that TSB are trying to change as little as possible, so are splitting out IBM systems, or at least duplicating them, and someone somewhere has not done the numbers, or more likely (in my vast experience) has been told those numbers (performance metrics, technical necessity etc.) do not match the other numbers (£££) and some serious corners have been cut. I hope the relevant technical people kept their emails on the subject.

IBM being brought in now is unlikely to be a free market choice; IBM are most likely the best people to fix it because it's IBM technology that's involved. If it's an architectural issue or a sizing issue, as is most likely, and this was not IBM's fault, then IBM aren't going to fix it without getting paid. Support doesn't cover that. The fact that TSB have little choice other than calling IBM is entirely down to lock-in. Of course, they may have had the option to move off IBM here, but probably decided to change as few things as possible to improve chances of success.

I'll reiterate that this is conjecture on my part, but I have a lot of experience here - being sent halfway round the world to fix customer issues. Of course, I no longer work there (took a package) but there are still people who can probably fix this. It won't be quick though and I can guarantee that the people who do fix it will get zero credit. Which is one of many reasons I no longer work there.

I am hoping the details do get leaked, but I for one am not pinning this entirely on TSB.

"it's nice to know the general is beside you when the troops are at the front line."

Even if he's only refilling the kettle and cutting the sandwiches. In fact especially if that's all he's doing.

There's a difference between being able to operate a new system day-to-day, which you may have been trained for, and being able to work around a system you've been using for years and know all the back routes in.

We have a mission critical but old, command line system at work. It's massively reliable (a few minutes downtime in three decades), fast and really efficient for those trained in it but management can't cope without drop-down menus so is being replaced with a much less reliable, much less capable Windows app. Thank's for nothing Steria.