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The technical complexity of the problem has nothing at all to do with the political and legal maneuvering required to get and execute a large government contrac

by mjn 13y ago

The technical complexity of the problem has nothing at all to do with the political and legal maneuvering required to get and execute a large government contract. Or a large contract with any organization, as far as I can tell. In universities, the whole education-ware thing is a mess, with huge piles of contractor dollars going to junk like Blackboard, who manage to sell things to high-level administrators. By far the best education-ware software I've used is stuff that was developed for almost nothing by comparison: 1) a course-specific tool a student made as a senior project; and 2) a wiki. In industry, I have some third-hand knowledge of a large procurement project at a petrochemical company that spent somewhere in the 9 or 10 figures on document digitization and didn't deliver any document digitization.

hga 13y ago
If petrochemical company project was mostly a document imaging project, when did that happen? I ask because I started playing that game when it was cutting edge, and finished about the time it was "very easy" (early to mid-90s).
- mjn 13y ago
  I'm not sure when it started, but I was hearing about it from around 1990 I think, and the project got axed around '95. I assume eventually they did get something done, either with a new contractor or in-house. I actually had a part-time job scanning large technical diagrams through a sheet-fed scanner in the late '90s, for a different company (a NASA contractor). It was technically not what I was hired for; the main reason they needed to bring in someone part-time is that they needed additional staff to help "debug" a space toilet. So my main job was using it, and recording some basic data (pH, etc.) in a logbook whenever I did. Since I was sitting around for a few hours a day in between toilet debugging, scanning technical diagrams seemed to be the main other thing that needed doing. Seemed like a pretty ad-hoc process, but I don't know what that one was like on the backend.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
Absolutely. And they're dysfunctional for many of the same reasons. I've worked both, and government is the big leagues. I've seen private organizations squander a few hundred million bucks here or there on disasters, but government projects can easily break into the billions or tens of billions of bucks -- and drag on for years. There's just much more money available, many more players who all want some random benefit from the project, and random rules to stick to. But you're right: this is a function of large numbers of really smart people all trying as hard as they can to do the best job possible. That's the craziest part about it. It's a systemic problem, not one that you fix by just somehow getting smarter people involved or buying a new project management tool.

by mjn 13y ago

hga 13y ago

If petrochemical company project was mostly a document imaging project, when did that happen? I ask because I started playing that game when it was cutting edge, and finished about the time it was "very easy" (early to mid-90s).

mjn 13y ago
I'm not sure when it started, but I was hearing about it from around 1990 I think, and the project got axed around '95. I assume eventually they did get something done, either with a new contractor or in-house. I actually had a part-time job scanning large technical diagrams through a sheet-fed scanner in the late '90s, for a different company (a NASA contractor). It was technically not what I was hired for; the main reason they needed to bring in someone part-time is that they needed additional staff to help "debug" a space toilet. So my main job was using it, and recording some basic data (pH, etc.) in a logbook whenever I did. Since I was sitting around for a few hours a day in between toilet debugging, scanning technical diagrams seemed to be the main other thing that needed doing. Seemed like a pretty ad-hoc process, but I don't know what that one was like on the backend.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

Absolutely. And they're dysfunctional for many of the same reasons. I've worked both, and government is the big leagues. I've seen private organizations squander a few hundred million bucks here or there on disasters, but government projects can easily break into the billions or tens of billions of bucks -- and drag on for years. There's just much more money available, many more players who all want some random benefit from the project, and random rules to stick to. But you're right: this is a function of large numbers of really smart people all trying as hard as they can to do the best job possible. That's the craziest part about it. It's a systemic problem, not one that you fix by just somehow getting smarter people involved or buying a new project management tool.