I find it hard to believe that CMMS actually performed system integration, such as it was. I find it easy to believe that CMMS hired a contractor to perform system integration. And just as the individual contractor employees saw issues, there were probably government employees within CMMS who also saw issues. . .and just enough senior executives - government and contractor - to ignore the "naysayers". . .and insist on having their fingers deeply in the pie of such a high-visibility project.
And, of course system integration was not the only project management/technical issue with this project.
I don't see why you find it so hard to believe. Hubris is a pretty common human flaw, perhaps it was felt this was too important to leave to the professionals.
In this article, we have two sets of sources using two different methods telling us this, and one of them is able to go on record, true name and all. It's also entirely consistent with the observed results (of course, so is having an outside integrator).
Climb down. . .I'm not accusing anyone of lying or fabricating. And yes, I'm well aware of the prevalence of hubris. I find it hard to believe because, having worked on both sides of the fence, I've never known or heard of any agency of any size, even DoD, doing the integration themselves. They almost always have contractors doing it, though they may manage the contractors and call themselves integrators. I believe they may have referred to CMMS as integrators without giving any thought to the contractor who actually performed the integration - at the contracted direction of CMMS.
"One highly unusual decision, reached early in the project, proved critical: the Medicare and Medicaid agency assumed the role of project quarterback, responsible for making sure each separately designed database and piece of software worked with the others, instead of assigning that task to a lead contractor."
And then a National Review Online (flagship publication of the Right, going back to 1955) article by a non-specialist who got information from 5 CMMS officials who also aren't software engineering types (but of course all concerned are learning a lot now, as I'm sure most of us did once upon a time). In http://nationalreview.com/corner/361577/assessing-exchanges-... he says they confirm most everything in the NYT article but the also disputed here by eyewitnesses claim that coding didn't start until February. For integration:
"The people I spoke with did all confirm the importance of one other detail in the Times story: that CMS did not hire a general contractor to manage the exchange project but handled that overall technical management task itself. None of the people I spoke with wanted to get into how this decision was made or at what level, but all of them agreed that it was a very bad idea and was at the core of the disaster they have so far experienced."
The above also might have input from the 3 insurance industry people he talked to.
And it's refreshing to see a lot of people put politics somewhat to the side to figure out just what went wrong in project management and software engineering land. The whole nation is getting an education in this, or as the NRO author put it:
"But [the CMMS officials] are policy and management people, not information-technology experts.
This latter point turns out to be quite important. The reaction of these individuals to what has happened in the last two weeks is the reaction of people who are coming to realize that their expectations and understanding of web development were mistaken. They believed (as I did too, I admit) that whatever technical problems the exchange sites encountered at first could be cleared up quickly and simply once things got going—that the contractors developing the websites could just respond to problems on the fly, as they became apparent. It is now increasingly obvious to them that this is simply not how things work, that building a website like this is a matter of exceedingly complex programming and not “design,” and that the problems that plague the federal exchanges (and some state exchanges) are much more severe and fundamental than anything they imagined possible. That doesn’t mean they can’t be fixed, of course, and perhaps even fixed relatively quickly, but it means that at the very least the opening weeks (and quite possibly months) of the Obamacare exchanges will be very different from what either the administration or its critics expected."
Well, its policy type critics. A lot of us expected the common big project screwups, which are hardly confined to the government.
Comments
I find it hard to believe that CMMS actually performed system integration, such as it was. I find it easy to believe that CMMS hired a contractor to perform system integration. And just as the individual contractor employees saw issues, there were probably government employees within CMMS who also saw issues. . .and just enough senior executives - government and contractor - to ignore the "naysayers". . .and insist on having their fingers deeply in the pie of such a high-visibility project.
And, of course system integration was not the only project management/technical issue with this project.
I don't see why you find it so hard to believe. Hubris is a pretty common human flaw, perhaps it was felt this was too important to leave to the professionals.
In this article, we have two sets of sources using two different methods telling us this, and one of them is able to go on record, true name and all. It's also entirely consistent with the observed results (of course, so is having an outside integrator).
Climb down. . .I'm not accusing anyone of lying or fabricating. And yes, I'm well aware of the prevalence of hubris. I find it hard to believe because, having worked on both sides of the fence, I've never known or heard of any agency of any size, even DoD, doing the integration themselves. They almost always have contractors doing it, though they may manage the contractors and call themselves integrators. I believe they may have referred to CMMS as integrators without giving any thought to the contractor who actually performed the integration - at the contracted direction of CMMS.
Errr, I didn't think you were, and am sorry if I gave that impression.
But I've stumbled across even more confirmation, first from a New York Times article on the 12th that I'm amazed we missed (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/politics/from-the-start...), which says:
"One highly unusual decision, reached early in the project, proved critical: the Medicare and Medicaid agency assumed the role of project quarterback, responsible for making sure each separately designed database and piece of software worked with the others, instead of assigning that task to a lead contractor."
And then a National Review Online (flagship publication of the Right, going back to 1955) article by a non-specialist who got information from 5 CMMS officials who also aren't software engineering types (but of course all concerned are learning a lot now, as I'm sure most of us did once upon a time). In http://nationalreview.com/corner/361577/assessing-exchanges-... he says they confirm most everything in the NYT article but the also disputed here by eyewitnesses claim that coding didn't start until February. For integration:
"The people I spoke with did all confirm the importance of one other detail in the Times story: that CMS did not hire a general contractor to manage the exchange project but handled that overall technical management task itself. None of the people I spoke with wanted to get into how this decision was made or at what level, but all of them agreed that it was a very bad idea and was at the core of the disaster they have so far experienced."
The above also might have input from the 3 insurance industry people he talked to.
And it's refreshing to see a lot of people put politics somewhat to the side to figure out just what went wrong in project management and software engineering land. The whole nation is getting an education in this, or as the NRO author put it:
"But [the CMMS officials] are policy and management people, not information-technology experts.
This latter point turns out to be quite important. The reaction of these individuals to what has happened in the last two weeks is the reaction of people who are coming to realize that their expectations and understanding of web development were mistaken. They believed (as I did too, I admit) that whatever technical problems the exchange sites encountered at first could be cleared up quickly and simply once things got going—that the contractors developing the websites could just respond to problems on the fly, as they became apparent. It is now increasingly obvious to them that this is simply not how things work, that building a website like this is a matter of exceedingly complex programming and not “design,” and that the problems that plague the federal exchanges (and some state exchanges) are much more severe and fundamental than anything they imagined possible. That doesn’t mean they can’t be fixed, of course, and perhaps even fixed relatively quickly, but it means that at the very least the opening weeks (and quite possibly months) of the Obamacare exchanges will be very different from what either the administration or its critics expected."
Well, its policy type critics. A lot of us expected the common big project screwups, which are hardly confined to the government.