7 ms·

4. The requirements are often flat out wrong. The Phoenix payroll system comes to mind, the Canadian government tried to shift the blame to IBM, but have their

4. The requirements are often flat out wrong. The Phoenix payroll system comes to mind, the Canadian government tried to shift the blame to IBM, but have their hands tied since IBM delivered exactly what was in the contract. It's just that what the government decided to put in the contract has little to do with how they really do payroll.

breakfastduck 6y ago
Basically the story of most govt IT investments.
- jordanbeiber 6y ago
  Have you worked at big companies outside tech? Their IT budgets are often ginormous with very little to show for it. Consulting havens. Slow, if at all, moving project organizations. It’s about size, budget models and competences. Time for another rant: Note that Sweden have implemented “new public management” NPM which basically pushes government agencies to govern like the ever oh so successful free market companies. This has had many really bad side effects since the 90s and it’s right up the neoliberal alley. In my book it’s just silly and something only professional politicians together with consultants can cook. But it’s a different story, really.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  This sort of anti-government comment seems to crop up regularly. My observation of corporate organisations attempting to guide software development is just as bad. I’m a proponent of doing these things in-house, however that path is far from straightforward and has masses of pitfalls too.
genuine_smiles 6y ago
> 4. The requirements are often flat out wrong. Isn't this basically a given? I find it hard to imagine that any organization could come up with good, complete requirements before they've had any software written.
- jussij 6y ago
  Which is why most governments struggle with big IT projects. Governments by their nature tend to approach everything from a legal perspective. This then means the requirements of these big IT project end up being a mass of legal documents which try to describe what is being delivered by whom. Then when the whole thing falls apart it ends up in the courts and the court then decides who promised what based on those original contract documents.
  - jordanbeiber 6y ago
    Everyone struggles with big IT projects. It’s also why Gene Kim & co wrote “The Phoenix Project” [1]. Everyone involved in software-building, non-tech industry should read it. In the end it’s just lean turned agile software dev. Reduce waste. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592 https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...
  - 6pac3rings 6y ago
    Take a triple bottom line solution to the problem. Take a look at how kmalloc_obj is going in DragonFly BSD. Government IT challenges three technical team leads to get to solution like kmalloc_obj. Performance pays for 1st prize and the rest get less money. Cut the time horizon from start to finish for the piece work to 18-months. Spread the risk of total failure to zero.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    I was in a pub with a relative, and we got chatting to another random patron. The relative was asked about his CS job, and at some point details were being discussed. The relative said something like “we have made what was asked for but because we have run out of time, that’s what the customer is getting. We know what they actually want and need, but that’s not in the contract”. The person we were talking to was the customer.
    - Hallucinaut 6y ago
      Sounds like a good way to get sued for breach of confidentiality clauses
mrweasel 6y ago
The Danish government tried to getting a new tax collection system built. The specificatio was 6000 page, not including the tax law that needed to be implemented. It facinates me that no one ever stopped to wonder if was actually possible to implement all that. It failed horribly, costing billion of DKK in implementation cost and even more in taxes that couldn’t be collected.
- roncohen 6y ago
  The other problem here is that politicians are either oblivious or simple don't care about the cost associated with complexity in the laws. On top of that, the other unfortunate dynamic that exists is that politicians all work to get their little special case into new bills so they can point to that when their constituents ask how they influenced the new law. Taken together, the complexity of the law just accumulates. Tax law in Denmark being a particularly gross example.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    I don't doubt that writing a new laws is complicated, but if I write code, and realise that I constantly need to tack on more code to handle special cases, then I will normally revisits my design. It is not my impression that politicians do the same with laws. One major issue, at least with Danish law makers, is that they want to target special groups, but that would be discriminating, so instead they attempt to target the behaviour of those group. This of cause will affect a number of people who where not in the original target group, so they add on exceptions and and details to narrow down the law. Also there never seems to be any clean up in the laws. If your laws/rule exploded from a few hundred pages to 30.000 pages, you should really revisit that thoughts behind that law.
    - reacharavindh 6y ago
      It's crazy out here in DK. The most embarrassing example of such crazy targeted laws is the "hand shake with the mayor" requirement for new Danish citizens, clearly target at a certain ethnicity that would hesitate to do just that. The intent is to make it difficult to that ethnicity, the result is just a veiled law that makes them "appear" just enough secular and non-discriminatory. There's a lot I love about life in Denmark. This is just to say that no place is perfect and DK also has stuff that all Danes should be rightly embarrassed about.
magicalhippo 6y ago
I was hired as a coder on a fun project like that. It wasn't a big project, I was the sole coder. What had been sold in was basically a Drupal install with some customization. I made sure they wrote a decent specification before I accepted the job. I delivered on time and we had the first test with the client. Everything went very well, and the client seemed happy. On the client side, the project was then moved from the project group to those who'd actually be using it. And then came the question from the new manager: Mgr: "This looks nice, but what about all the other sites?" Us: "Other sites? The contract was only for one site." Mgr: "Well, the whole point here was to have 17 sites with site-specific content written by site-specific users, managed centrally with a unified look as if it was one single site." Us: "Err... that's not what the specification we agreed on says." Mgr: "Well, as it stands this is useless to us." And so the simple three day job turned into many weeks.
- _0ffh 6y ago
  Many appropriately paid weeks, I sincerely hope for you!?
  - magicalhippo 6y ago
    Since the specifications were sufficiently clear, the client could indeed see rather easily that the solution they wanted was not what was agreed upon. Had I not insisted on such detailed specs though, it would likely have been a lot harder to get them to pay up. So yeah, worked out fine for me, but taught me a valuable lesson.
owroomexorcist 6y ago
And guess who just bought another expensive IBM solution for payment management?

breakfastduck 6y ago

Basically the story of most govt IT investments.

jordanbeiber 6y ago
Have you worked at big companies outside tech? Their IT budgets are often ginormous with very little to show for it. Consulting havens. Slow, if at all, moving project organizations. It’s about size, budget models and competences. Time for another rant: Note that Sweden have implemented “new public management” NPM which basically pushes government agencies to govern like the ever oh so successful free market companies. This has had many really bad side effects since the 90s and it’s right up the neoliberal alley. In my book it’s just silly and something only professional politicians together with consultants can cook. But it’s a different story, really.
lostlogin 6y ago
This sort of anti-government comment seems to crop up regularly. My observation of corporate organisations attempting to guide software development is just as bad. I’m a proponent of doing these things in-house, however that path is far from straightforward and has masses of pitfalls too.

genuine_smiles 6y ago

> 4. The requirements are often flat out wrong. Isn't this basically a given? I find it hard to imagine that any organization could come up with good, complete requirements before they've had any software written.

jussij 6y ago
Which is why most governments struggle with big IT projects. Governments by their nature tend to approach everything from a legal perspective. This then means the requirements of these big IT project end up being a mass of legal documents which try to describe what is being delivered by whom. Then when the whole thing falls apart it ends up in the courts and the court then decides who promised what based on those original contract documents.
- jordanbeiber 6y ago
  Everyone struggles with big IT projects. It’s also why Gene Kim & co wrote “The Phoenix Project” [1]. Everyone involved in software-building, non-tech industry should read it. In the end it’s just lean turned agile software dev. Reduce waste. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592 https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...
- 6pac3rings 6y ago
  Take a triple bottom line solution to the problem. Take a look at how kmalloc_obj is going in DragonFly BSD. Government IT challenges three technical team leads to get to solution like kmalloc_obj. Performance pays for 1st prize and the rest get less money. Cut the time horizon from start to finish for the piece work to 18-months. Spread the risk of total failure to zero.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  I was in a pub with a relative, and we got chatting to another random patron. The relative was asked about his CS job, and at some point details were being discussed. The relative said something like “we have made what was asked for but because we have run out of time, that’s what the customer is getting. We know what they actually want and need, but that’s not in the contract”. The person we were talking to was the customer.
  - Hallucinaut 6y ago
    Sounds like a good way to get sued for breach of confidentiality clauses

mrweasel 6y ago

The Danish government tried to getting a new tax collection system built. The specificatio was 6000 page, not including the tax law that needed to be implemented. It facinates me that no one ever stopped to wonder if was actually possible to implement all that. It failed horribly, costing billion of DKK in implementation cost and even more in taxes that couldn’t be collected.

roncohen 6y ago
The other problem here is that politicians are either oblivious or simple don't care about the cost associated with complexity in the laws. On top of that, the other unfortunate dynamic that exists is that politicians all work to get their little special case into new bills so they can point to that when their constituents ask how they influenced the new law. Taken together, the complexity of the law just accumulates. Tax law in Denmark being a particularly gross example.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  I don't doubt that writing a new laws is complicated, but if I write code, and realise that I constantly need to tack on more code to handle special cases, then I will normally revisits my design. It is not my impression that politicians do the same with laws. One major issue, at least with Danish law makers, is that they want to target special groups, but that would be discriminating, so instead they attempt to target the behaviour of those group. This of cause will affect a number of people who where not in the original target group, so they add on exceptions and and details to narrow down the law. Also there never seems to be any clean up in the laws. If your laws/rule exploded from a few hundred pages to 30.000 pages, you should really revisit that thoughts behind that law.
  - reacharavindh 6y ago
    It's crazy out here in DK. The most embarrassing example of such crazy targeted laws is the "hand shake with the mayor" requirement for new Danish citizens, clearly target at a certain ethnicity that would hesitate to do just that. The intent is to make it difficult to that ethnicity, the result is just a veiled law that makes them "appear" just enough secular and non-discriminatory. There's a lot I love about life in Denmark. This is just to say that no place is perfect and DK also has stuff that all Danes should be rightly embarrassed about.

magicalhippo 6y ago

I was hired as a coder on a fun project like that. It wasn't a big project, I was the sole coder. What had been sold in was basically a Drupal install with some customization. I made sure they wrote a decent specification before I accepted the job. I delivered on time and we had the first test with the client. Everything went very well, and the client seemed happy. On the client side, the project was then moved from the project group to those who'd actually be using it. And then came the question from the new manager: Mgr: "This looks nice, but what about all the other sites?" Us: "Other sites? The contract was only for one site." Mgr: "Well, the whole point here was to have 17 sites with site-specific content written by site-specific users, managed centrally with a unified look as if it was one single site." Us: "Err... that's not what the specification we agreed on says." Mgr: "Well, as it stands this is useless to us." And so the simple three day job turned into many weeks.

_0ffh 6y ago
Many appropriately paid weeks, I sincerely hope for you!?
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  Since the specifications were sufficiently clear, the client could indeed see rather easily that the solution they wanted was not what was agreed upon. Had I not insisted on such detailed specs though, it would likely have been a lot harder to get them to pay up. So yeah, worked out fine for me, but taught me a valuable lesson.

owroomexorcist 6y ago

And guess who just bought another expensive IBM solution for payment management?