In case anyone wants to read up on the CityTime project, the VillageVoice had a pretty lengthy spread on it in January.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/01/this_week...
NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
71–80 of 80 posts
Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
#72that seems a little excessive even at 63 million...I'd bet if you gave a YC startup $1 million, they'd be able to do the project in 1 year.
Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
What position are you in to declare the Bloomberg terminal 'shitty overpriced software'?
Just so people can put this in perspective, a Bloomberg terminal license costs approx $1750 per month, with a two year contract. The software basically gives users a fairly raw interface to financial data, analytics and an email/IM system. In a sales call, the Bloomberg sales reps will demonstrate endless functionality of the terminal : there's a huge amount there. The dirty secret is, though, that most people use on…
Also, it should be mentioned that it has over 30k functions. Some of these are so obscure, that if you happen to only use one of these functions, the high monthly cost could be justified.
Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, timekeeping software really isn't as trivial as you might like, at least assuming that we want to move beyond the raw recording of who worked when out into actual management of such things. Requirements come from federal, state, and local laws, as well as negotiations with all relevant unions. So even before you've gotten to the usual BS requirements laid on by management, you've already got a large pile…
But, really.... timekeeping and payroll were some of the FIRST business applications developed. It's a solved problem at this point, even with all the nuances. Developing this from scratch for NYC seems like the epitome of reinventing the wheel.
No enterprise software is a solved problem yet, there's a lot of bad software dominating at the moment (look no further than sage for accounting for example), any enterprise software you randomly pick will suffer from at least one of:
- Have bloody awful UIs
- Aren't extensible
- Need a massive amount of expensive consultant days to setup
- Are very brittle
- Have an overwhelming list of features which make them very hard to use
- Have bizarre restrictions on certain data (e.g. max 100 chars for a comment)
- They're not capable of talking with common system X
- Don't expose an API
- Have atrocious db structure making reporting extremely expensive in dev time
- Use a home rolled DB (oh. god. no.)
As for the problem of timekeeping being extremely complex, it's not at all. It's difficult, but solvable with one or two decent developers/project managers in a few months. I know as I've seen it done twice now.
It's only extremely complex if you try and include every weird quirk and feature that every client has ask for. Sometimes the solution isn't extending the software, it's changing the business process or simply leaving them on the old paper system.
If you take a 37signals-esque path you've got something that'll sell to 80% of businesses, let niche software cover the rest.
Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, sounds a lot like our university's tech overhaul, especially the single signon stuff.
The idea of single sign on isn't bad, it's just a pipe dream with all the services and crappy software accumulated over the years.
Everywhere I go I end up on SSO projects. I always swear I'll avoid them, but they seem to jump out at me when I least expect it.
Your assessment of the software and services seems fairly accurate to me (there are a couple of exceptions: CAS is simple enough to be easily understandable and works ok, and Atlassian Crowd looks ok too).
Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And yet what programmer, or project manager, has a salary of $676,031? Those are top-level manager salaries.
Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
#77that seems a little excessive even at 63 million...I'd bet if you gave a YC startup $1 million, they'd be able to do the project in 1 year.
See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2716446
with 1 million, you can afford to pay a thousand bucks to have someone translate that for you
Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, really.... timekeeping and payroll were some of the FIRST business applications developed. It's a solved problem at this point, even with all the nuances. Developing this from scratch for NYC seems like the epitome of reinventing the wheel.
No enterprise software is a solved problem yet, there's a lot of bad software dominating at the moment (look no further than sage for accounting for example), any enterprise software you randomly pick will suffer from at least one of: - Have bloody awful UIs - Aren't extensible - Need a massive amount of expensive consultant days to setup - Are very brittle - Have an overwhelming list of features which make them very…
"It's difficult, but solvable with one or two decent developers/project managers in a few months. I know as I've seen it done twice now."
It was actually my first task that I ever did "for real", though we did only the raw recording; the processing was done by older code that had all the quirks built in. It was a success, too. The problem itself is easy, but it's definitely in the class of things that can be made arbitrarily hard by added requirements with no thought given to costs/benefits. Fortunately on my project, the devs and the management were on good terms, so much thought was given to cost/benefit tradeoffs, but I can easily see cascading failure in a different environment. Even the easiest software projects can and are sunk by that.
Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
#79Although 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
Yeah, those look like outrageous salaries. But, to be fair, I doubt they are salaries. They're probably derived from hourly consultant rates of around $250 / hour.
Re: NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, really.... timekeeping and payroll were some of the FIRST business applications developed. It's a solved problem at this point, even with all the nuances. Developing this from scratch for NYC seems like the epitome of reinventing the wheel.
No enterprise software is a solved problem yet, there's a lot of bad software dominating at the moment (look no further than sage for accounting for example), any enterprise software you randomly pick will suffer from at least one of: - Have bloody awful UIs - Aren't extensible - Need a massive amount of expensive consultant days to setup - Are very brittle - Have an overwhelming list of features which make them very…
"If you take a 37signals-esque path you've got something that'll sell to 80% of businesses, let niche software cover the rest."
Er, has it occurred to you that the insanely convoluted world of NYC government might constitute a niche?