So, the FBI's management faced a tough decision early on: Hit the deadline and risk the project, or miss the deadline and do it right. Instead of cheating on project management to accommodate an aggressive schedule, the FBI sacrificed the Gantt chart to make sure the project got a good start.

Sure, it looks bad when bid-award day arrives months later than it was supposed to. But unresolved problems just get more expensive over time. If slipping the schedule at the start is the price for nailing down problems early, that little bit of embarrassment and delay is a bargain.

It may just require educating some members of Congress about the realities of software development when it's time to ask for the rest of that $500 million.

So, has the FBI got it right? This time, we won't have to wait four years to find out. Whether bureau users have their case management Web portal by the end of 2007 will tell us a lot about how well the FBI can do a big IT project the second time around.

Frank Hayes, Computerworld's senior news columnist, has covered IT for more than 20 years. Contact him at frank_hayes@computerworld.com.