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These contracts are generally bloated, but if you've never seen how a $10M+ contract for things like this works you're probably thinking about it wrong. The ac

These contracts are generally bloated, but if you've never seen how a $10M+ contract for things like this works you're probably thinking about it wrong. The actual development piece is a pretty small portion of the overall work. The bulk of it is figuring out all the requirements, wrangling legacy systems and data into some kind of shape that can either be interfaced with or imported, documentation, support (including phone), client hand-holding, etc. Yes it's a lot of overhead, but this isn't a run of the mill green-field SaaS app a few 22 year olds can crank out in a few weeks.

deleted 6y ago
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robomartin 6y ago
Not to mention the terms in these kinds of contracts. The only way to deal with them is to charge enough to be protected. I have sold product (hardware) to places like the Navy Surface Warfare Center and White Sands Missile Test Range. If you are not careful you can come out losing in a big way. For example, for each day/week/month you deliver past the estimated delivery date they discount 5% from your invoice. Sound like great motivation to deliver on time, right? Well, no, it's a guaranteed 100% (or whatever you can get away with) markup beyond what you would have charged because if anything goes wrong you'll go broke. That said, this issue of super-expensive government websites done wrong feels all too common. You have to wonder how much cash we burn repeating the same mistakes.
deleted 6y ago
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stefan_ 6y ago
When did we have the last nationwide vaccination campaign, whats the "legacy"? Pretty sure that was when IBM still made tabulators. I think you will find that if only there was someone in charge to put their foot down, you can do without a whole lot of these things. But that's part of the problem of course: the government contracting out is just a bunch of clueless people making up a wish list with a partner on the other side whose only inclination is to say yes to everything.
- nojito 6y ago
  The data flows into legacy systems like VAERS
  - stefan_ 6y ago
    Have you seen the vaccination setups? It's just car queues! I'm sure nothing there "flows" without a whole lot of manual data entry. So now what, you are reporting this adverse event to VAMS who reports it to VAERS? There is no flow, it's all just duplicate effort from architecture astronauts.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      Vaccinating a whole country is a hell of a lot more complicated than just car queues.
    - afavour 6y ago
      Huh? States have lists of eligible vaccination recipients that they reach out to. It’s very much not just keeping track of a line of cars.
  - mrzimmerman 6y ago
    You’re actually saying it costs millions to hand off data to a legacy system? A system that has probably had to consume something like XML or JSON in the last 20 years? There is no excuse for this kind of cost for things as simple as tracking g appointments and completions regardless of data transformations and storage. There are no magical new protocols or data formats it’s using, it’s just a lot of people charging too much for them to have week long meetings to talk about their area of expertise. It’s an embarrassment.
j45 6y ago
Sounds like a lot of $6-700/hr management consultants that don't know much about tech but are happy to channel their inner Steve Jobs to try and architect something. The 22 year olds might not be able to do it (I beg to differ), but can management consultants/accountants who barely took typing in school who have Excel as the height of their digital literacy be expected to have all the answers? By the time this gets to technical folks, 70-80% of the budget has been burned. Edit: Beware Management Consultants and Accountants encroaching into "IT". Their worlds are drying up because tech folks can learn business easier than business folks can learn tech. Edit 2: removed age reference.
- headmelted 6y ago
  So very much this when it comes to how easily money can be wasted on these kinds of deals. Can’t agree at all with the ageism though, which is wholly uncalled for.
  - j45 6y ago
    I don't mean to support any ageism and would be happy to withdraw my age reference. What that may leave is decision makers who don't always have a high enough level of digital or technical literacy. Folks who are not competent in technology decisions and implementations being in positions of decision making and spending is the point I was trying to make.
    - rob74 6y ago
      Ever heard of the Peter principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) ?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - j45 6y ago
        Haha, have heard of that principle but not what it was called.
nataz 6y ago
This guy gets it. Development is literally the simplest part of the problem set. The intersection of domain expertise, contracting/procurement creativity, and technical evaluation is the tough part to wrangle. Getting to the point where development can start is 95% of the battle in my experience. Not to trivialize the actual development portion of the project, but most missteps happen early, dooming projects before anyone sits down to code.
- belter5 6y ago
  There was just an article on here last week about how software development is a learning process and programs are just artifacts of that process. Big, old, messy, and highly regulated domains will obviously be hard to learn.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Here's an example I learned on Friday: If money is left over, apply to the next available item via (logic). Unless money is sent twice, for two separate sub-items on the same item, in which case if the first amount is insufficient to cover the entirety of the first sub-item, the excess (if any) from the second amount, after being applied to the second sub-item, must be applied to the remainder of the first sub-item. There are legal ramifications of doing the first way, without the second. And only the actual in-the-trenches people were able to tell us about the second. Using outsourced process documentation is @&$&ing useless.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      To be fair, this sounds like someone having a hard time saying you should apply the money sent to the entire balance.
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        Nope. That's pretty much what the specs (written by outsourced consultants) said. In reality, there's one edge case where things needs to be applied in a different, distinct, and very specific order, otherwise (legal consequences).
Covzire 6y ago
I worked at some government contractor a few years ago and one of the tasks I was given was to oversee the implementation of a ticketing system for a client. The basic requirements were for something slightly better than using an excel spreadsheet with basic search functionality. After a preliminary sales call with one well known vendor, they told us the next steps to implementing this system was to bring a consultant on-site to assess all the ancillary requirements, at a cost of nearly $100k. I had a little laugh about it with some colleges and my manager and I kind of wept a little inside, because I doubt this is a rare occurrence and it only takes 1 incompetent manager to create a massive amount of useless revenue for some vendor.
- apexalpha 6y ago
  I've seen massive government contracts where "Big Consul" has some guy who does nothing else than take all documentation from the previous "Big Consul" and rewrites it according to their own internal format, and they bill €150 an hour for it, for months... And then when their time is up and the new tender starts the next firm does the same thing to rewrite it all in their format...
abhgh 6y ago
For many corporate client system developments this is my experience too. Producing the actual LOCs is not the primary cost; it's requirement gathering, figuring out how to plug in the new component into an existing system etc. As an example of the first, you might be digitizing a cross-department workflow. Your job now basically becomes to interview stakeholders from each dept and have them commit to a single online workflow. An example of the second is you might want postgre for your backend, but the client might want a single stop db on whatever they're using today. Then there are challenges around integrating with existing APIs, workflows etc. Let's not forget feature creep. Sometimes the client might not be able to visualize the final UX in its entirety (often simply because multiple people are involved),and therefore, they might only begin realizing its impact as and when parts of the new system becomes available. Essentially, you are not paid to build an isolated system, but to understand well and play nicely with the larger context - human and technological - within which your system must live.
brokenkebab 6y ago
From the article it seems that they don't provide tech support neither to doctors, nor patients. And wrangling legacy systems in the field still may be worked out for much less money. The real problem is that requirements are written in such a way that very few (in this particular case just ONE) companies can satisfy, so essentially there's no competition - exactly a kind of situation which lets to pump up prices. And if you asking yourself are those requirements really benefit users, or specifically created for money to go to, you know, "right hands" - you're probably asking the right question.
- futuretaint 6y ago
  Why are they even building custom software at all if the target demographic is 70+ ? And why are they making senior citizens opt-in for an appointment ? its idiotic. They should have nationalized the browser/OS vendors to provide a solution, for free if its a national emergency.
jariel 6y ago
No, this is not cynical enough. Even the part you mentioned: 'wrangling data for legacy systems' does not cost that much, it's still a small piece of the pie. The 'bulk of it' goes to sales, BD, marketing, profits, layers of excess management, specialist consultants, accountants and lawyers. This contract is an example of 'modern world graft'. Healtchare.gov cost $1-2 Billion and it was also a mess until Google Engineers came in to save it. Software is not like Construction where the costs can at least be well estimated and you don't need geniuses. It's frankly very depressing and this kind of graft and stupidity is all over the system. There are actually not that many people who are both: 1) technically/project competent enough to figure it out and 2) have enough gravitas on the business side to make proper bids. Partly that's the fault of government. To be fair, it's also bad buyers who change requirements all over the place and throw projects in dispensary often for what are ultimately political reasons. It's a real failure of leadership.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  > 'wrangling data for legacy systems' does not cost that much, it's still a small piece of the pie Are you sure? Because I think it might possibly involve: - interfacing with an old COBOL system - interfacing with an old DB2/ORACLE/(legacy database) with a "very creative" Schema and even more creative indexes (or maybe none - who knows). More bonus points if it's not even ASCII encoded - Production system runs on a VM serving an old classic ASP or PHP app - Data can be exported through an XML from Hell but that takes 2h to export.
  - JimBlizz 6y ago
    You forgot the step where you even need to identify that these things already exist, and whats in them. Are there governance requirements around the data in them? I'm not familiar with US law, but we're talking about PII in this example so what legal and privacy hoops need jumping to copy the data? Thats before we get to "Can an person with this specific learning disability, or a person who doesn't have a fixed address navigate through this form?"
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    I've done some of those, 90% by myself, for a modern ecommerce site for a 150-year-old company on a 30-year-old Oracle DB.
blackrock 6y ago
It sounds like they needed a senior business systems analyst to map out the functional requirements specifications document. Usually, though not always, this helps to give a road map for the organization to follow. Bugs will arise of course, but usually, it becomes localized, and can be addressed individually. But for large systems, with lots of moving parts and data integrations with other systems, then you normally need a good, near-air-tight specifications document.
- GordonS 6y ago
  I work for a megacorp outsourcer, and when we run big projects, we embed Business Analysts in the business, so they are working alongside the key stakeholders/decision makers for the duration of the project. A recent project was valued at around $10M USD, but for that the customer got a fully-featured mobile app that their entire blue-collar workforce will use every single day, replacing gigantic paper work packs. The backend was hybrid-cloud, interfacing with multiple on-prem systems, including a legacy ERP system which had started life in the early 80's. So, it was a big and complex project - but it was also a successful one, because we know how to run projects like this. There were various factors that led to success. The BAs were probably most integral. We also held regular week-long workshops with the customer to work on the backlog, with the architect/tech lead (me) and dev team leads all present too. There was a group of pilot users, that always had access to the latest features. And of course, we used automated tests. Any big corp, like Deloitte, should be able to deliver a relatively simple website, even if it has multiple integrations with legacy systems. And they should be able to advise and steer the customer if they are woolly on what they actually need - there is only so much blame you can put at the customer's door when systems like this are a disaster.
bitexploder 6y ago
And then supporting it. For a decade. 44m might be bloated, but, it goes quick and it is work no one really wants to do due to how hairy and legacy it can get.
- jspaetzel 6y ago
  Ongoing support isn't the issue here, this is basically a greenfield project with nothing hairy to get in the way.
  - bitexploder 6y ago
    These contracts often have the hosting and other support fees over some long period built in. I didn’t dig into this one specifically, but it’s quite common.
didibus 6y ago
> Yes it's a lot of overhead, but this isn't a run of the mill green-field SaaS app a few 22 year olds can crank out in a few weeks. I get your point, but also yes it is. The issue is superficial, it's like when I try to Zoom with my mom, it'll take 10 times longer as I need to explain and bring her along every single step of the way. This is the same for these type of contracts. A lot of the slowdowns come from people just not letting development take its course as it should. Just look at the article, the states ended up choosing to use a bunch of SaaS startup not even designed for this use case in its place, like eventbrite. And look at the issues: > “It won’t work on Internet Explorer; it only works in Chrome. The ‘Next’ button is all the way down and to the right, so if you’re on a cell phone, you literally can’t see it,” says Rowe. That's not a project management issue, that's a full on development issue, it doesn't even work on mobile in 2021 !!
- JimBlizz 6y ago
  This is it. Even if the feature set fits perfectly, a private organisation will optimise for profit or growth, not broadest usage. The user that needs help finding a button isn't worth the development cost. Gov services cannot operate that way.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Is Eventbrite Chrome desktop only or is the CDC contracted website? I think you may have read that backward.
- laurent92 6y ago
  > zoom with my mum I don’t get why people don’t just use Whereby, no login no plugin. It makes conferencing so easier.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    Probably because they haven't heard of it.
sarmasamosarma 6y ago
If these guys can use eventbrite instead it can’t be that complicated.
bloqs 6y ago
Ouch my imposter syndrome
brabel 6y ago
Bullshit. The broken system Delloit developed is being replaced with Eventbrite in certain states, pen and paper in others. All the users needed was a simple scheduling system which shouldn't cost anywhere near 40M to develop no matter how you spin it. Is Eventbrite works for this, why did no one actually think to just use that (or the many similar systems created for this kind of thing)? Pretty sure Deloit itself just wrapped something like Eventbrite around a skin UI and delivered that. The only answer I can come up with, even after trying to be generous, is corruption. The fact that there was no bidding should be enough for that contract to be highly suspicious. People in the top are pocketing most of the 40M and everyone involved knows it.
- JimBlizz 6y ago
  As much as this contract will certainly be a barrel full of pork, and Deloitte can go eat a bag of hammers, I feel this take is a little naive. A commercial service is optimised for profit, not broadest accessibility. For example Eventbrite won't spend money developing special features for very specific niche user cohorts because of diminishing returns. Government websites can't work that way, they have to be accessible and usable by all citizens. Think of people with different learning abilities or language proficiency, the likely environments the users might be in, and their general technical abilities. Here in the UK there are strict rules about use of clear language, well thought out user flows, how to ask for certain types of information etc that has all been backed by years of research. We have a whole government department that covers this and will audit your new service to make sure it is good enough. Having done this as a web developer for our Government, it was a massive eye opener to have a copywriter pick through the language I used in a form flow, and point out how confusing it could be to some groups of people. Or indicate that the method by which I was asking for an address made no sense for certain remote locations, and it needed to. A few specific things to point out on Eventbrite in particular. It seems to me that you are likely have a whole bunch of other requirements too. Off the top of my head you'd need more powerful management tools to control: simply setting up so many locations and dates, who can book when (patient cohorts, priority groups), the logistics of vaccines and vaccinators, tracking vaccine batches used for each person.
getlawgdon 6y ago
Still not a $44mm problem.
- laurent92 6y ago
  I’d say getting the contract signed is already 1/3 of the total. You need to be big enough to apply (requires investment), apply to many government contracts, you need to understand the legal terms, price them, understand the regulations, price them in, then price the software development itself and price any other provider (hardware happens very quickly), and if you guess wrong, like on 1/3rd of the projects, you’re in debt... and you have 100% chance of getting the contract if you price it wrong. Getting the contract done is another 1/3 of the contract, and the lawyers to deal with disputes and prove that you’ve done the contract, is another 1/3.
Aeolun 6y ago
> this isn't a run of the mill green-field SaaS app a few 22 year olds can crank out in a few weeks It’s probably exactly that. I always strongly wonder if you wouldn’t get a better result if you gave a pair of 22 year olds 1M and a year to develop and figure out all the same things.
- fuzzfactor 6y ago
  Bingo. You just have to find the correct pair. Doesn't actually matter how old or young they are, just that they don't actually need more experience than you could get from two top-performing 22-year-olds that could easily make more than a million in progress over a year. And it would have even been worth it to spend the first year doing nothing but intensively searching for these two so you could have operators so far above average and so well suited to the task, and so well agreed upon over a period of a whole year, that nothing else could even come close. It would probably be best with a pair who are equally motivated whether they would be getting the half million apiece or not, because a lot of that could be spent by now. When everyone creating the software has the rare extreme performance ability that very few companies ever get to have even one employee that good, the more suitable the performance the fewer operators it should be expected to require. This just has to be put into perspective compared to what you can get from a typical bureaucratic team for $44 million. Average bureaucrats have never been good enough for average things.

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robomartin 6y ago

Not to mention the terms in these kinds of contracts. The only way to deal with them is to charge enough to be protected. I have sold product (hardware) to places like the Navy Surface Warfare Center and White Sands Missile Test Range. If you are not careful you can come out losing in a big way. For example, for each day/week/month you deliver past the estimated delivery date they discount 5% from your invoice. Sound like great motivation to deliver on time, right? Well, no, it's a guaranteed 100% (or whatever you can get away with) markup beyond what you would have charged because if anything goes wrong you'll go broke. That said, this issue of super-expensive government websites done wrong feels all too common. You have to wonder how much cash we burn repeating the same mistakes.

deleted 6y ago

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stefan_ 6y ago

When did we have the last nationwide vaccination campaign, whats the "legacy"? Pretty sure that was when IBM still made tabulators. I think you will find that if only there was someone in charge to put their foot down, you can do without a whole lot of these things. But that's part of the problem of course: the government contracting out is just a bunch of clueless people making up a wish list with a partner on the other side whose only inclination is to say yes to everything.

nojito 6y ago
The data flows into legacy systems like VAERS
- stefan_ 6y ago
  Have you seen the vaccination setups? It's just car queues! I'm sure nothing there "flows" without a whole lot of manual data entry. So now what, you are reporting this adverse event to VAMS who reports it to VAERS? There is no flow, it's all just duplicate effort from architecture astronauts.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Vaccinating a whole country is a hell of a lot more complicated than just car queues.
  - afavour 6y ago
    Huh? States have lists of eligible vaccination recipients that they reach out to. It’s very much not just keeping track of a line of cars.
- mrzimmerman 6y ago
  You’re actually saying it costs millions to hand off data to a legacy system? A system that has probably had to consume something like XML or JSON in the last 20 years? There is no excuse for this kind of cost for things as simple as tracking g appointments and completions regardless of data transformations and storage. There are no magical new protocols or data formats it’s using, it’s just a lot of people charging too much for them to have week long meetings to talk about their area of expertise. It’s an embarrassment.

j45 6y ago

Sounds like a lot of $6-700/hr management consultants that don't know much about tech but are happy to channel their inner Steve Jobs to try and architect something. The 22 year olds might not be able to do it (I beg to differ), but can management consultants/accountants who barely took typing in school who have Excel as the height of their digital literacy be expected to have all the answers? By the time this gets to technical folks, 70-80% of the budget has been burned. Edit: Beware Management Consultants and Accountants encroaching into "IT". Their worlds are drying up because tech folks can learn business easier than business folks can learn tech. Edit 2: removed age reference.

headmelted 6y ago
So very much this when it comes to how easily money can be wasted on these kinds of deals. Can’t agree at all with the ageism though, which is wholly uncalled for.
- j45 6y ago
  I don't mean to support any ageism and would be happy to withdraw my age reference. What that may leave is decision makers who don't always have a high enough level of digital or technical literacy. Folks who are not competent in technology decisions and implementations being in positions of decision making and spending is the point I was trying to make.
  - rob74 6y ago
    Ever heard of the Peter principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) ?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - j45 6y ago
      Haha, have heard of that principle but not what it was called.

nataz 6y ago

This guy gets it. Development is literally the simplest part of the problem set. The intersection of domain expertise, contracting/procurement creativity, and technical evaluation is the tough part to wrangle. Getting to the point where development can start is 95% of the battle in my experience. Not to trivialize the actual development portion of the project, but most missteps happen early, dooming projects before anyone sits down to code.

belter5 6y ago
There was just an article on here last week about how software development is a learning process and programs are just artifacts of that process. Big, old, messy, and highly regulated domains will obviously be hard to learn.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Here's an example I learned on Friday: If money is left over, apply to the next available item via (logic). Unless money is sent twice, for two separate sub-items on the same item, in which case if the first amount is insufficient to cover the entirety of the first sub-item, the excess (if any) from the second amount, after being applied to the second sub-item, must be applied to the remainder of the first sub-item. There are legal ramifications of doing the first way, without the second. And only the actual in-the-trenches people were able to tell us about the second. Using outsourced process documentation is @&$&ing useless.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    To be fair, this sounds like someone having a hard time saying you should apply the money sent to the entire balance.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      Nope. That's pretty much what the specs (written by outsourced consultants) said. In reality, there's one edge case where things needs to be applied in a different, distinct, and very specific order, otherwise (legal consequences).

Covzire 6y ago

I worked at some government contractor a few years ago and one of the tasks I was given was to oversee the implementation of a ticketing system for a client. The basic requirements were for something slightly better than using an excel spreadsheet with basic search functionality. After a preliminary sales call with one well known vendor, they told us the next steps to implementing this system was to bring a consultant on-site to assess all the ancillary requirements, at a cost of nearly $100k. I had a little laugh about it with some colleges and my manager and I kind of wept a little inside, because I doubt this is a rare occurrence and it only takes 1 incompetent manager to create a massive amount of useless revenue for some vendor.

apexalpha 6y ago
I've seen massive government contracts where "Big Consul" has some guy who does nothing else than take all documentation from the previous "Big Consul" and rewrites it according to their own internal format, and they bill €150 an hour for it, for months... And then when their time is up and the new tender starts the next firm does the same thing to rewrite it all in their format...

abhgh 6y ago

For many corporate client system developments this is my experience too. Producing the actual LOCs is not the primary cost; it's requirement gathering, figuring out how to plug in the new component into an existing system etc. As an example of the first, you might be digitizing a cross-department workflow. Your job now basically becomes to interview stakeholders from each dept and have them commit to a single online workflow. An example of the second is you might want postgre for your backend, but the client might want a single stop db on whatever they're using today. Then there are challenges around integrating with existing APIs, workflows etc. Let's not forget feature creep. Sometimes the client might not be able to visualize the final UX in its entirety (often simply because multiple people are involved),and therefore, they might only begin realizing its impact as and when parts of the new system becomes available. Essentially, you are not paid to build an isolated system, but to understand well and play nicely with the larger context - human and technological - within which your system must live.

brokenkebab 6y ago

From the article it seems that they don't provide tech support neither to doctors, nor patients. And wrangling legacy systems in the field still may be worked out for much less money. The real problem is that requirements are written in such a way that very few (in this particular case just ONE) companies can satisfy, so essentially there's no competition - exactly a kind of situation which lets to pump up prices. And if you asking yourself are those requirements really benefit users, or specifically created for money to go to, you know, "right hands" - you're probably asking the right question.

futuretaint 6y ago
Why are they even building custom software at all if the target demographic is 70+ ? And why are they making senior citizens opt-in for an appointment ? its idiotic. They should have nationalized the browser/OS vendors to provide a solution, for free if its a national emergency.

jariel 6y ago

No, this is not cynical enough. Even the part you mentioned: 'wrangling data for legacy systems' does not cost that much, it's still a small piece of the pie. The 'bulk of it' goes to sales, BD, marketing, profits, layers of excess management, specialist consultants, accountants and lawyers. This contract is an example of 'modern world graft'. Healtchare.gov cost $1-2 Billion and it was also a mess until Google Engineers came in to save it. Software is not like Construction where the costs can at least be well estimated and you don't need geniuses. It's frankly very depressing and this kind of graft and stupidity is all over the system. There are actually not that many people who are both: 1) technically/project competent enough to figure it out and 2) have enough gravitas on the business side to make proper bids. Partly that's the fault of government. To be fair, it's also bad buyers who change requirements all over the place and throw projects in dispensary often for what are ultimately political reasons. It's a real failure of leadership.

raverbashing 6y ago
> 'wrangling data for legacy systems' does not cost that much, it's still a small piece of the pie Are you sure? Because I think it might possibly involve: - interfacing with an old COBOL system - interfacing with an old DB2/ORACLE/(legacy database) with a "very creative" Schema and even more creative indexes (or maybe none - who knows). More bonus points if it's not even ASCII encoded - Production system runs on a VM serving an old classic ASP or PHP app - Data can be exported through an XML from Hell but that takes 2h to export.
- JimBlizz 6y ago
  You forgot the step where you even need to identify that these things already exist, and whats in them. Are there governance requirements around the data in them? I'm not familiar with US law, but we're talking about PII in this example so what legal and privacy hoops need jumping to copy the data? Thats before we get to "Can an person with this specific learning disability, or a person who doesn't have a fixed address navigate through this form?"
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I've done some of those, 90% by myself, for a modern ecommerce site for a 150-year-old company on a 30-year-old Oracle DB.

blackrock 6y ago

It sounds like they needed a senior business systems analyst to map out the functional requirements specifications document. Usually, though not always, this helps to give a road map for the organization to follow. Bugs will arise of course, but usually, it becomes localized, and can be addressed individually. But for large systems, with lots of moving parts and data integrations with other systems, then you normally need a good, near-air-tight specifications document.

GordonS 6y ago
I work for a megacorp outsourcer, and when we run big projects, we embed Business Analysts in the business, so they are working alongside the key stakeholders/decision makers for the duration of the project. A recent project was valued at around $10M USD, but for that the customer got a fully-featured mobile app that their entire blue-collar workforce will use every single day, replacing gigantic paper work packs. The backend was hybrid-cloud, interfacing with multiple on-prem systems, including a legacy ERP system which had started life in the early 80's. So, it was a big and complex project - but it was also a successful one, because we know how to run projects like this. There were various factors that led to success. The BAs were probably most integral. We also held regular week-long workshops with the customer to work on the backlog, with the architect/tech lead (me) and dev team leads all present too. There was a group of pilot users, that always had access to the latest features. And of course, we used automated tests. Any big corp, like Deloitte, should be able to deliver a relatively simple website, even if it has multiple integrations with legacy systems. And they should be able to advise and steer the customer if they are woolly on what they actually need - there is only so much blame you can put at the customer's door when systems like this are a disaster.

bitexploder 6y ago

And then supporting it. For a decade. 44m might be bloated, but, it goes quick and it is work no one really wants to do due to how hairy and legacy it can get.

jspaetzel 6y ago
Ongoing support isn't the issue here, this is basically a greenfield project with nothing hairy to get in the way.
- bitexploder 6y ago
  These contracts often have the hosting and other support fees over some long period built in. I didn’t dig into this one specifically, but it’s quite common.

didibus 6y ago

> Yes it's a lot of overhead, but this isn't a run of the mill green-field SaaS app a few 22 year olds can crank out in a few weeks. I get your point, but also yes it is. The issue is superficial, it's like when I try to Zoom with my mom, it'll take 10 times longer as I need to explain and bring her along every single step of the way. This is the same for these type of contracts. A lot of the slowdowns come from people just not letting development take its course as it should. Just look at the article, the states ended up choosing to use a bunch of SaaS startup not even designed for this use case in its place, like eventbrite. And look at the issues: > “It won’t work on Internet Explorer; it only works in Chrome. The ‘Next’ button is all the way down and to the right, so if you’re on a cell phone, you literally can’t see it,” says Rowe. That's not a project management issue, that's a full on development issue, it doesn't even work on mobile in 2021 !!

JimBlizz 6y ago
This is it. Even if the feature set fits perfectly, a private organisation will optimise for profit or growth, not broadest usage. The user that needs help finding a button isn't worth the development cost. Gov services cannot operate that way.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Is Eventbrite Chrome desktop only or is the CDC contracted website? I think you may have read that backward.
laurent92 6y ago
> zoom with my mum I don’t get why people don’t just use Whereby, no login no plugin. It makes conferencing so easier.
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  Probably because they haven't heard of it.

sarmasamosarma 6y ago

If these guys can use eventbrite instead it can’t be that complicated.

bloqs 6y ago

Ouch my imposter syndrome

brabel 6y ago

Bullshit. The broken system Delloit developed is being replaced with Eventbrite in certain states, pen and paper in others. All the users needed was a simple scheduling system which shouldn't cost anywhere near 40M to develop no matter how you spin it. Is Eventbrite works for this, why did no one actually think to just use that (or the many similar systems created for this kind of thing)? Pretty sure Deloit itself just wrapped something like Eventbrite around a skin UI and delivered that. The only answer I can come up with, even after trying to be generous, is corruption. The fact that there was no bidding should be enough for that contract to be highly suspicious. People in the top are pocketing most of the 40M and everyone involved knows it.

JimBlizz 6y ago
As much as this contract will certainly be a barrel full of pork, and Deloitte can go eat a bag of hammers, I feel this take is a little naive. A commercial service is optimised for profit, not broadest accessibility. For example Eventbrite won't spend money developing special features for very specific niche user cohorts because of diminishing returns. Government websites can't work that way, they have to be accessible and usable by all citizens. Think of people with different learning abilities or language proficiency, the likely environments the users might be in, and their general technical abilities. Here in the UK there are strict rules about use of clear language, well thought out user flows, how to ask for certain types of information etc that has all been backed by years of research. We have a whole government department that covers this and will audit your new service to make sure it is good enough. Having done this as a web developer for our Government, it was a massive eye opener to have a copywriter pick through the language I used in a form flow, and point out how confusing it could be to some groups of people. Or indicate that the method by which I was asking for an address made no sense for certain remote locations, and it needed to. A few specific things to point out on Eventbrite in particular. It seems to me that you are likely have a whole bunch of other requirements too. Off the top of my head you'd need more powerful management tools to control: simply setting up so many locations and dates, who can book when (patient cohorts, priority groups), the logistics of vaccines and vaccinators, tracking vaccine batches used for each person.

getlawgdon 6y ago

Still not a $44mm problem.

laurent92 6y ago
I’d say getting the contract signed is already 1/3 of the total. You need to be big enough to apply (requires investment), apply to many government contracts, you need to understand the legal terms, price them, understand the regulations, price them in, then price the software development itself and price any other provider (hardware happens very quickly), and if you guess wrong, like on 1/3rd of the projects, you’re in debt... and you have 100% chance of getting the contract if you price it wrong. Getting the contract done is another 1/3 of the contract, and the lawyers to deal with disputes and prove that you’ve done the contract, is another 1/3.

Aeolun 6y ago

> this isn't a run of the mill green-field SaaS app a few 22 year olds can crank out in a few weeks It’s probably exactly that. I always strongly wonder if you wouldn’t get a better result if you gave a pair of 22 year olds 1M and a year to develop and figure out all the same things.

fuzzfactor 6y ago
Bingo. You just have to find the correct pair. Doesn't actually matter how old or young they are, just that they don't actually need more experience than you could get from two top-performing 22-year-olds that could easily make more than a million in progress over a year. And it would have even been worth it to spend the first year doing nothing but intensively searching for these two so you could have operators so far above average and so well suited to the task, and so well agreed upon over a period of a whole year, that nothing else could even come close. It would probably be best with a pair who are equally motivated whether they would be getting the half million apiece or not, because a lot of that could be spent by now. When everyone creating the software has the rare extreme performance ability that very few companies ever get to have even one employee that good, the more suitable the performance the fewer operators it should be expected to require. This just has to be put into perspective compared to what you can get from a typical bureaucratic team for $44 million. Average bureaucrats have never been good enough for average things.