The Government of Canada’s project to centralize their payroll and reduce cost was initiated in 2009 and dubbed “Phoenix”.

This was a calibration of several years between the Public Services and Procurement Canada and vendor, IBM, to customize the popular PeopleSoft platform to handle the all the setup and pay rules of all the departments and agencies.

By now you’ve heard the ongoing problems, attention and grief this new pay system has had on the Employees of the Government of Canada.

We found the this great report from the Auditor General of Canada that outlines in details what the problems are, where they originated from and what it could possibly take to resolve all the issues.

This is a good example of a payroll / HCM implementation project gone wrong and what we as professionals can learn and use in our own methodologies.

Any thoughts, comments?