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NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

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Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#41

Post by protagonist_h »

bmelton wrote: post #29
kenjackson wrote: post #5

CityTime was launched in 2003 at a budget of $63 million, but costs swelled dramatically as the project stumbled along for nearly a decade. From $63M to $600M? I would have thought that ppl may have noticed when the costs doubled or tripled the budget. Almost 10x the original budget? That type of oversight must go pretty high up.

I've been on the wrong end of a couple of projects like this, and in my experience (not necessarily indicative of this case) the customer can be VERY at fault. I've been dragged into 'feature acceptance meetings' that literally dragged out for weeks when testing of a new chat component devolved into a days-long discussion on whether the graphic in the header (provided by the customer) was appropriate. The unspoken is…

what? it took 400 man hours to replace a logo?

Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#42

Post by gnaritas »

protagonist_h wrote: post #41
bmelton wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on the wrong end of a couple of projects like this, and in my experience (not necessarily indicative of this case) the customer can be VERY at fault. I've been dragged into 'feature acceptance meetings' that literally dragged out for weeks when testing of a new chat component devolved into a days-long discussion on whether the graphic in the header (provided by the customer) was appropriate. The unspoken is…

what? it took 400 man hours to replace a logo?

400 man hours to decide to replace a logo, big difference. That's what you get when you design by committee.

Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#43

Post by RickHull »

heydenberk wrote: post #33
tkahn6 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full disclosure I'm an intern at Bloomberg. You're essentially correct on all points but clients tend to use many more than 4 functions though significantly less than the total number. And with regards to IM and email, it should be noted that any user of a Bloomberg terminal can IM any other user anywhere in the world (there's no 'friending' or anything). Many, many trades are conducted over IM or 'IB' as it's called…

> The most accurate analog I can think of to the Bloombeg terminal is Emacs. It has everything and the kitchen sink (News, dining suggestions, email, IM, sports updates, etc.) and clients are extremely particular about functionality. Of course, Emacs is free . Do you think Bloomberg is susceptible to competition from a much lower-priced and much leaner startup?

Bloomberg terminal is a classic example of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#44

Post by bmelton »

gnaritas wrote: post #42
protagonist_h wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what? it took 400 man hours to replace a logo?

400 man hours to decide to replace a logo, big difference. That's what you get when you design by committee.

Exactly right.

Replacing the logo itself took all of about 30 minutes (receive new picture, digitally retouch, overlay onto background image, resize, play around with transparency, save to png.)

Also, bear in mind, the 400 hours is 400 man-hours, which is a cumulative number based on the number of people involved. If you've never done business with government, let me assure you, it was a lot more people than necessary.

Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#45

Post by arctangent »

protagonist_h wrote: post #41
bmelton wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on the wrong end of a couple of projects like this, and in my experience (not necessarily indicative of this case) the customer can be VERY at fault. I've been dragged into 'feature acceptance meetings' that literally dragged out for weeks when testing of a new chat component devolved into a days-long discussion on whether the graphic in the header (provided by the customer) was appropriate. The unspoken is…

what? it took 400 man hours to replace a logo?

From personal experience I can confirm that this is exactly how it works when governments try to do things. There's such a compulsive need to negate risk that everything is all about the process instead of the results - and inevitably this leads to huge amounts of wasted time and money while people try to decide the right thing to do.

Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#46

Post by calloc »

mavelikara wrote: post #32
thematt wrote: post #8

Although New York has "received a working system that will advance our management ability ... because the project was apparently tainted by fraud and kickback schemes, the City must be made whole" ... The city is also planning to launch a request for information (RFI) process in January in search of alternative timekeeping systems. Wow. So they eventually got a working system. Now they're throwing it away and going t…

For those wondering how the project could have cost so much, here are some of the annual salaries that were paid out: Job Title Annual Salary ------------------------------------------- Specialist, Level 4A $676, 031 Project Manager, Level 4 $661, 628 Project Manager, Level 3 $632, 653 Project Manager, Level 3D $601, 286 From http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Gerard+Denault/photos

Those job titles are set by the government and specify what pay is going to be. My job title at my current company is Computer Analyst, yet I am a computer programmer. The gov't contract we have mandates that specific title.

Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#47

Post by rluhar »

ams6110 wrote: post #21
clistctrl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what are some of the complexities involved in a timekeeping system?

Things like varying overtime rates depending on time of day, accumulated hours, whether it's a holiday, different rates for depending on specific work assignments, etc. It's not as simple as a flat rate x number of hours. But it's nothing that hasn't been done before, either.

Agreed. You also have to think about who can approve the hours booked. So you would need to have some sort of hook into the HR / Org database which determines each users entitlements. It gets very very complicated! Technically, the problem is nothing new. The difficulty lies in designing the system and getting it to work correctly with an organizations existing business processes and systems.

Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#48

Post by zaidf »

bmelton wrote: post #29
kenjackson wrote: post #5

CityTime was launched in 2003 at a budget of $63 million, but costs swelled dramatically as the project stumbled along for nearly a decade. From $63M to $600M? I would have thought that ppl may have noticed when the costs doubled or tripled the budget. Almost 10x the original budget? That type of oversight must go pretty high up.

I've been on the wrong end of a couple of projects like this, and in my experience (not necessarily indicative of this case) the customer can be VERY at fault. I've been dragged into 'feature acceptance meetings' that literally dragged out for weeks when testing of a new chat component devolved into a days-long discussion on whether the graphic in the header (provided by the customer) was appropriate. The unspoken is…

Wow, sounds a lot like our university's tech overhaul, especially the single signon stuff.

Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#49

Post by protagonist_h »

kingkilr wrote: post #19
jarrett wrote: post #17

Those who say that the city's payroll needs are complex are entirely correct. A city government that size will inevitably have a mind-boggling number of variations in the business rules that the software must model. Yet $600 million? I've built accounting software, and though it wasn't as complex as what NYC needs, I'm 90% sure $600 million is astronomically higher than what a reasonable price would be. What about th…

I've never built a time keeping system, but this is how I put that number in perspective. For $63 million I can hire everyone who's ever been a Django core developer (people I've worked with, and who are excellent) for 5 years, at 500k a year... and there'd be money left over.

Building a time-keeping system for large city like NYC is many,many times more work than building web-framework like Django. It's not a technically complicated problem, but it has a different kind of complexity. That complexity comes complex business requirements, which have to be analyzed and implemented piece-by-piece.

Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project

#50

Post by patio11 »

emehrkay wrote: post #39
thematt wrote: post #8

Although New York has "received a working system that will advance our management ability ... because the project was apparently tainted by fraud and kickback schemes, the City must be made whole" ... The city is also planning to launch a request for information (RFI) process in January in search of alternative timekeeping systems. Wow. So they eventually got a working system. Now they're throwing it away and going t…

I could write one this weekend for only 3 million dollars. Somebody get me bloomberg's info

Do payroll slips issued by the system to part-time workers have the option to translate the statement of worker's rights mandated by NY city law on the back of the slip into Mandarin Chinese? No? "Did you even read the bid document? It was right there on page 487 where it said 'The system must be fully compliant with NYC labor law.'"

There are literally a hundred thousand requirements like that one.

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