4 ms·

No one should allow a business or non-profit to face a situation like this. Only bad managers put something so important into such difficult circumstances. Why

No one should allow a business or non-profit to face a situation like this. Only bad managers put something so important into such difficult circumstances. Why go live the day of the election? Are they insane? Unless the contract (to build this application) had some kind of clause like "This thing must work perfectly or all the money will be refunded" then this is a great contract to get. Let us consider this cynically for a moment. I wish I could land contracts like this one. Can you imagine building an app that the client will only need for 1 day, and you still get paid even if the thing does not work? The chance for fraud is huge. Who would even allow this? The people pitching this must have been some very talented salespeople (perhaps they were convincingly able to argue that they were such huge Republican supporters that if they lost then that would be punishment enough, as it would be so very sad for them to see Obama win?) I've worked with a lot of startups and clients and the staff always needs training and you never, ever know what all the bugs are until you've gotten some feedback from the staff who are using it for real. To suggest that a software project is done the day you first give it to the staff is idiotic -- that's simply the moment you move to real world testing. Some developers might suggest that a really good suite of unit tests might provide enough insurance, but that is not true -- I've worked with non-technical staff who tend to confuse bad UI decisions with software bugs, and if a UI decision is bad enough, I think it is fair to classify it as a bug. If some_important_action is crucial to the staff, and none of the staff can find the link to some_important_action, then the UI decision that hid it is effectively as bad as a Fatal Exception, but no amount of unit tests can tell you that the staff finds the UI incomprehensible.

incision 14y ago
>I wish I could land contracts like this one. Can you imagine building an app that the client will only need for 1 day, and you still get paid even if the thing does not work? The chance for fraud is huge. Who would even allow this? The people pitching this must have been some very talented salespeople... Anecdotally, this is exactly how large consultancies, particularly those who specialize in serving the public sector, operate. 1) Deploy an army of "talented" salespeople to establish favorable executive-level relationships by exploiting every available loophole to provide trips, gifts, dinners and sporting events. Once the top has been won over, everyone below will fall in line. 2) Write contracts meeting the barest minimum interpretation of the requirements. Design them to specifically exploit uninformed procurement departments which are better equipped to source millions in copier paper or bolts than complex software. 3) Farm out any actual deliverable to the cheapest sub available nationwide. Ideally, you will have hidden travel and per diem for the talent in #2 leaving you free to fly in folks from the cheapest parts of the country. 4) Upon encountering any serious issue once work is underway simply scapegoat the current PM and shuffle in a new one. 5) Go to #1 employing the latest project as a reference that likely won't even be properly checked. In the event that diligence is performed, feed them to one of your friendly executives.
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  That explains what I saw on one of my past projects, including replacing PM, travel&per diem, and presenting failed projects as a good reference.
- TheCondor 14y ago
  Was this a talented sales pitch or just your standard politics and an old boys club connection? No mention of the consulting company.. If it was my campaign, I'd hang them out to dry. Seems the IT staff was out of their depth but there were some very serious and very fundamental issues if the users were confused as it sounds. I say it as a joke but a barbed one: this guy thinks he was fit to manage a nation when he couldn't knock out a web app for 30000 users!?! Really?
  - crag 14y ago
    "If it was my campaign, I'd hang them out to dry." I doubt Romney even knew the details of this mess. I'd be surprised if he knows it now. As is typical of many "high level" exec's; Romney relied on the wrong people.
  - javert 14y ago
    Fortunatey, it's not the president's job to "manage a nation." As a side note, an almost do-nothing president would be the best kind. (And, as a side note to the side note, that was what was intended when the office was created.)
- gordonguthrie 14y ago
  And it is worse in the US because the client is the Romney organisation not the Republican Party - and it definately wont be around next time to learn the lesson.

incision 14y ago

>I wish I could land contracts like this one. Can you imagine building an app that the client will only need for 1 day, and you still get paid even if the thing does not work? The chance for fraud is huge. Who would even allow this? The people pitching this must have been some very talented salespeople... Anecdotally, this is exactly how large consultancies, particularly those who specialize in serving the public sector, operate. 1) Deploy an army of "talented" salespeople to establish favorable executive-level relationships by exploiting every available loophole to provide trips, gifts, dinners and sporting events. Once the top has been won over, everyone below will fall in line. 2) Write contracts meeting the barest minimum interpretation of the requirements. Design them to specifically exploit uninformed procurement departments which are better equipped to source millions in copier paper or bolts than complex software. 3) Farm out any actual deliverable to the cheapest sub available nationwide. Ideally, you will have hidden travel and per diem for the talent in #2 leaving you free to fly in folks from the cheapest parts of the country. 4) Upon encountering any serious issue once work is underway simply scapegoat the current PM and shuffle in a new one. 5) Go to #1 employing the latest project as a reference that likely won't even be properly checked. In the event that diligence is performed, feed them to one of your friendly executives.

dennisgorelik 14y ago
That explains what I saw on one of my past projects, including replacing PM, travel&per diem, and presenting failed projects as a good reference.
TheCondor 14y ago
Was this a talented sales pitch or just your standard politics and an old boys club connection? No mention of the consulting company.. If it was my campaign, I'd hang them out to dry. Seems the IT staff was out of their depth but there were some very serious and very fundamental issues if the users were confused as it sounds. I say it as a joke but a barbed one: this guy thinks he was fit to manage a nation when he couldn't knock out a web app for 30000 users!?! Really?
- crag 14y ago
  "If it was my campaign, I'd hang them out to dry." I doubt Romney even knew the details of this mess. I'd be surprised if he knows it now. As is typical of many "high level" exec's; Romney relied on the wrong people.
- javert 14y ago
  Fortunatey, it's not the president's job to "manage a nation." As a side note, an almost do-nothing president would be the best kind. (And, as a side note to the side note, that was what was intended when the office was created.)
gordonguthrie 14y ago
And it is worse in the US because the client is the Romney organisation not the Republican Party - and it definately wont be around next time to learn the lesson.