I May Need A New Job

Because this may get me fired.

I am a quality assurance manager on the largest State government software development project in US history. If you listen to the management of the company developing the application or read any of the State reports, everything is just swell. If you talk to the people who are doing the work or the contractors hired to advise the State (including me), you mostly hear "We're doomed!"

Why is it that someone would hire experts in their field and then totally ignore what they say because it's not what you want to here? Instead, you bury your head in the sand and listen to the people trying to sell you a bill of goods saying that there isn't a problem at all. It doesn't matter that the application hasn't had a system integration test, it can't test automated features before it goes into production, it has hundreds of open defects, etc.

It almost sounds like any version of Windows. Q: What does Microsoft call beta testers? A: Users.

The last time the State tried to build this application, the developing contractor was fired after delivering a non-functioning application at a 200 percent cost overrun. The State auditor issued a report identifying all of the things that went wrong. We are currently going through that report and identifying similarities between that project and this one (there are a lot). Apparently, a similar effort is being undertaken by the State.

Their version reads like a college thesis on how to plan a project to not repeat mistakes. It talks about all the things that are going to be done to prevent past mistakes. The problem is, they are written from the point of view of before the project starts. They say all sorts of wonderful things about how mistakes will be prevented.

Our version looks at where the project is now. It compares what happened on the previous project with the mistakes that have already been made.

I guess the difference is, ours is written to try to help the State fix the problems. Theirs is written to pull out when the press comes looking for someone to blame after 800 million dollars of taxpayer money is spent on a system that doesn't work.

Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be better to actually FIX THE PROBLEM instead of planning the cover up.

Don't you just love government agencies?

I guess that's enough venting for now. We'll just keep our report for our defense.