4 ms·

I'm a bit shocked that anyone could believe there was actually $600M of software to build. I know prices are inflated by the whole federal contracting guidelin

by smoyer 11y ago

I'm a bit shocked that anyone could believe there was actually $600M of software to build. I know prices are inflated by the whole federal contracting guidelines but I'd say these contracts were at least two orders of magnitude greater than what they would have been in the private sector. And nothing against our friends to the north, but why wouldn't we bid more of this out to US companies? Perhaps those that satisfy the WO-MO requirements?

wil421 11y ago
It boggles my mind that they spent so much. CGI Federal got almost 300 million. The company I work for has an IT budget not much smaller. We employ over 1,000 people around the world in IT alone. They must've had an army of people working on crap apparently. I'm sure they higher ups padded their wallets and walked away happy whether it worked or not. The first mistake was not finding a department with big budget experience.
- newjersey 11y ago
  Part of the issue is everyone who is present at every meeting gets billed for the time at the meeting for the project. Mikey Dickerson talked about how there were ~50 contractor firms and nobody seemed to be in charge. This is good for all contractors because if nobody's in charge then nobody gets in trouble. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vc8sxhy2I4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vc8sxhy2I4
giancarlostoro 11y ago
I think that is the one thing about all of this that saddens me the most. There's definitely enough talent to make such a project function, and yet we totally botched that up completely. I've known teenagers in my younger days who've created much more complicated projects in shorter spans of time.
- dasil003 11y ago
  > I've known teenagers in my younger days who've created much more complicated projects in shorter spans of time. No you haven't, and the hyperbole doesn't help. It's quite possible the specification of all the legislation is actually logically unsolveable since it was created by thousands of different people over the course of decades with very little coordination. When the time comes to build a unified system it's no wonder the job is very very difficult.
  - aianus 11y ago
    > It's quite possible the specification of all the legislation is actually logically unsolveable The specification was made by people as part of the project, it's not a law of physics. The teenager wouldn't create so much complexity.
    - dasil003 11y ago
      Not a law of nature, but needing to accommodate thousands of man-laws that predate the project by decades, yes. The teenager is also not responsible for solving the health needs of 300 million people.
rwallace 11y ago
Okay but aren't you implicitly assuming a sane set of specifications? I've seen it claimed that the input legislation was forty thousand pages. Can't confirm that of my own knowledge, but if it's true, far from criticizing the management of the implementation, we should be holding it up as a miracle that it was ever successfully implemented at all for any price.
- smoyer 11y ago
  I've seen that too ... and it probably cost many millions of dollars to come up with the ambiguous and likely contradictory specification. People always want to blame the waterfall method for this, but there are a couple aspects to BDUF that I think can help even the most agile project. From the DOD world, Interface Control Documents (ICDs) are a great way to make sure components (especially those developed by different teams) inter-operate. There should also be a reasonably cohesive architectural vision. From that starting point, write some user stories and adapt as needed for each sprint. You need to know approximately where you're headed, but you almost certainly CAN'T know everything you'll learn ahead of time (as this sort of specification implies. As an aside, contractors love ambiguities in specifications and it's actually in their best interest (unless operating on a fixed-price contract) to purposely produce something that meets the specification but is obviously not what the customer needs. There's good money in ECRs.

by smoyer 11y ago

wil421 11y ago

It boggles my mind that they spent so much. CGI Federal got almost 300 million. The company I work for has an IT budget not much smaller. We employ over 1,000 people around the world in IT alone. They must've had an army of people working on crap apparently. I'm sure they higher ups padded their wallets and walked away happy whether it worked or not. The first mistake was not finding a department with big budget experience.

newjersey 11y ago
Part of the issue is everyone who is present at every meeting gets billed for the time at the meeting for the project. Mikey Dickerson talked about how there were ~50 contractor firms and nobody seemed to be in charge. This is good for all contractors because if nobody's in charge then nobody gets in trouble. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vc8sxhy2I4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vc8sxhy2I4

giancarlostoro 11y ago

I think that is the one thing about all of this that saddens me the most. There's definitely enough talent to make such a project function, and yet we totally botched that up completely. I've known teenagers in my younger days who've created much more complicated projects in shorter spans of time.

dasil003 11y ago
> I've known teenagers in my younger days who've created much more complicated projects in shorter spans of time. No you haven't, and the hyperbole doesn't help. It's quite possible the specification of all the legislation is actually logically unsolveable since it was created by thousands of different people over the course of decades with very little coordination. When the time comes to build a unified system it's no wonder the job is very very difficult.
- aianus 11y ago
  > It's quite possible the specification of all the legislation is actually logically unsolveable The specification was made by people as part of the project, it's not a law of physics. The teenager wouldn't create so much complexity.
  - dasil003 11y ago
    Not a law of nature, but needing to accommodate thousands of man-laws that predate the project by decades, yes. The teenager is also not responsible for solving the health needs of 300 million people.

rwallace 11y ago

Okay but aren't you implicitly assuming a sane set of specifications? I've seen it claimed that the input legislation was forty thousand pages. Can't confirm that of my own knowledge, but if it's true, far from criticizing the management of the implementation, we should be holding it up as a miracle that it was ever successfully implemented at all for any price.

smoyer 11y ago
I've seen that too ... and it probably cost many millions of dollars to come up with the ambiguous and likely contradictory specification. People always want to blame the waterfall method for this, but there are a couple aspects to BDUF that I think can help even the most agile project. From the DOD world, Interface Control Documents (ICDs) are a great way to make sure components (especially those developed by different teams) inter-operate. There should also be a reasonably cohesive architectural vision. From that starting point, write some user stories and adapt as needed for each sprint. You need to know approximately where you're headed, but you almost certainly CAN'T know everything you'll learn ahead of time (as this sort of specification implies. As an aside, contractors love ambiguities in specifications and it's actually in their best interest (unless operating on a fixed-price contract) to purposely produce something that meets the specification but is obviously not what the customer needs. There's good money in ECRs.