4 ms·

You mean like the Obamacare website that cost nearly $2 Billion to develop? By none other than CGI, HQ'd down the street from me in Montreal? Governments and

You mean like the Obamacare website that cost nearly $2 Billion to develop? By none other than CGI, HQ'd down the street from me in Montreal? Governments and Big Corps have quite an ability to spend money :). Understand that it's a game of distribution of power - not outcomes, and you understand it a little bit better :). Exceptionalism and efficiency is for small companies and startups, for the most part.

hga 10y ago
In all fairness to CGI and company, the government set them up for abject failure, no dream team of programmers could have succeeded with it taking the role of integrator for which is did not have the talent or realization of the testing required, so many delayed decisions, and last minute changes (like a very big one a week or two before), being forced to use an unfamiliar database that, worse, implemented an unfamiliar paradigm (wasn't an RDBMS), etc. I wrote more details on this on HN at the time, ask and I'll dig some up.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  I don't doubt that, but it's $2 Billion we're talking. An 'unfamiliar database' does not begin to cover it. Neither do 'last minute changes'. It was a boondogle from the start, failure in gov, failure in planning etc., failure to understand what they are doing. Google Engineers had to come in and fix it.
  - hga 10y ago
    I'm sorry for my lack of clarity: An unfamiliar database paradigm. If it was some random RDBMS there wouldn't have been a huge problem there. You ignored the constantly late transmission of requirements, and I can't believe you're saying that a fundamental re-engineering of the way the site worked 2 or less weeks before launch should be trivialized. How are you even going to test that, when you don't really have the time to implement it well?
guiomie 10y ago
Considering the US is a powerhouse of software engineering, and this was a state project, why did they pay CGI a Canadian company to do this?
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  Because at the national scale, there are only a few outfits that could feasibly make the bid. IBM, Accenture, a couple of others. CGI is maybe the biggest 'go to' shop for this stuff. They have zillions of developers ready to go, and a deeply entrenched lobbyist/salesforce. It's not as though the US Gov could just go to some little startup. Even though the probably should have - big governments and companies don't understand innovation and how these things work. They see it like building 12 football stadiums - how could a small team do it? They need massive industries, tons of experts, lawyers, business analysts! :) These things are hard.

hga 10y ago

In all fairness to CGI and company, the government set them up for abject failure, no dream team of programmers could have succeeded with it taking the role of integrator for which is did not have the talent or realization of the testing required, so many delayed decisions, and last minute changes (like a very big one a week or two before), being forced to use an unfamiliar database that, worse, implemented an unfamiliar paradigm (wasn't an RDBMS), etc. I wrote more details on this on HN at the time, ask and I'll dig some up.

jomamaxx 10y ago
I don't doubt that, but it's $2 Billion we're talking. An 'unfamiliar database' does not begin to cover it. Neither do 'last minute changes'. It was a boondogle from the start, failure in gov, failure in planning etc., failure to understand what they are doing. Google Engineers had to come in and fix it.
- hga 10y ago
  I'm sorry for my lack of clarity: An unfamiliar database paradigm. If it was some random RDBMS there wouldn't have been a huge problem there. You ignored the constantly late transmission of requirements, and I can't believe you're saying that a fundamental re-engineering of the way the site worked 2 or less weeks before launch should be trivialized. How are you even going to test that, when you don't really have the time to implement it well?

guiomie 10y ago

Considering the US is a powerhouse of software engineering, and this was a state project, why did they pay CGI a Canadian company to do this?

jomamaxx 10y ago
Because at the national scale, there are only a few outfits that could feasibly make the bid. IBM, Accenture, a couple of others. CGI is maybe the biggest 'go to' shop for this stuff. They have zillions of developers ready to go, and a deeply entrenched lobbyist/salesforce. It's not as though the US Gov could just go to some little startup. Even though the probably should have - big governments and companies don't understand innovation and how these things work. They see it like building 12 football stadiums - how could a small team do it? They need massive industries, tons of experts, lawyers, business analysts! :) These things are hard.