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How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

theatlantic.com

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Re: How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

#11

Post by wpietri »

vonmoltke wrote: post #4
dominotw wrote: post #3

ugh. Youth worship again. fuck these people.

Not just youth worship, youth genius worship. Having been subjected to the government's definition of "agile" before[1], I can tell you that nearly everyone who was at least barely competent technically[2] thought the processes were asinine. The problem is that nobody could convince the government customers and non-technical management of this. The government in particular was bad, as their reps (GS and contractor) o…

> This team managed to do what they did because they were outsiders brought in specifically to fix a high-profile fuck-up.

This is true. But having recently talked with a number of people at 18F and the USDS, I think the enormous scale of the high-profile fuckup is serving as a great example to persuade people that things should be done differently.

For example, note that the government is trying to change the purchasing processes that drive heavyweight methods and delivery of monoliths:

https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/01/08/creating-a-federal-marketplac...

Re: How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

#12

Post by batoure »

I applaud the accomplishments of these people. But I don't like the narrative because it is misleading. Lets change context with a nice metaphor and reframe the discussion...

"how a team of immigrants helped bring in a strawberry harvest"

The success of this team is based on a relationship between two things: 1) eagerness to prove one self 2) willingness to suffer pain in order to prove one self

Having worked with a number of them, my experience has been that building things from scratch in big bureaucracies (that aren't software companies) is basically impossible. To much group think inevitably destroys the scoping process.

The teams that have impressed me in big bureaucracies tend to operate in the following manner: -take/buy something off the shelf that meets 60% of the requirements -use a team of seasoned project managers and engineers who have seen the darkest gloomiest bloodiest field of battle to incrementally patch and beat that software into the inflexible mold of their bureaucracy

This strategy usually works surprisingly well, but it is like comparing steering a slow moving container ship to a speed boat. It's part of the reason that the agile SaaS market is so successful and profitable.

I first went to work with an organization where a planning meeting was discussing a new feature. Because of my startup culture experience I asked a PM after the meeting "this sounds cool should I whip up a prototype tonight". The project manager laughed and said "this feature set is on the roadmap for 2014 (two years out at the time), we wanted your input but you should be focusing on your existing ticket pipeline". When you consider the scope of the organization the things that they were doing with their core platform was pretty incredible.

That being said it drove me personally nuts, and I quit.

Re: How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

#13

Post by toomuchtodo »

wpietri wrote: post #10
sabarjp wrote: post #5

"Fixing" government web has nothing to do with young people. I contracted for 5 years for the Department of Defense doing full stack web. Yes, most people I worked with were double my age or more, but many of them are very talented and eager to implement new technology. The problem is the massive, unbelievable amount of red tape to get things done. Software stacks and browsers have to get approval and re-approvals, a…

Speaking as an old, I think youth is part of the answer. One of the things I have to really work at as I get older is unlearning the things that used to be true. Given the pace of technological change, younger people have an advantage in that they have less to unlearn. > Start-up culture and tech trends just don't work at the scale of government, for much the same reasons massive corporations move glacially. This is…

> Government can also work differently. The folks at 18F and the US Digital Service are demonstrating that in ways both large and small. Indeed, when I was looking at a USDS job, a White House advisor told me plainly that agile, iterative approaches were clearly better for government because they were much more effective at risk reduction than producing piles of documents ever could be.

Is there a reason you didn't take the USDS job?

Re: How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

#15

Post by ubernostrum »

sabarjp wrote: post #5

"Fixing" government web has nothing to do with young people. I contracted for 5 years for the Department of Defense doing full stack web. Yes, most people I worked with were double my age or more, but many of them are very talented and eager to implement new technology. The problem is the massive, unbelievable amount of red tape to get things done. Software stacks and browsers have to get approval and re-approvals, a…

Of course, part of the "fun" is that much of the red tape is put there by (theoretically) well-intentioned people who want to prevent waste, inefficiency and corruption.

Re: How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

#16

Post by orf »

stephengillie wrote: post #9
orf wrote: post #6

Is there any more information about the inner workings of the failed healthcare.gov site? It's quite interesting to read how horribly wrong they got it.

This has to be the 10th submarine piece I've seen about healthcare.gov.

They all seem to be light on the technical reasons though.

Re: How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

#17

Post by maxxxxx »

spiritplumber wrote: post #8

As usual, a fix-it team does 80% of the work in 20% of the time for 5% of the money.

I think often fix-it-teams are allowed to do things the regulars are not allowed to do. I have seen several projects where pretty much everybody (except maybe the top managers) knew what's wrong but wasn't allowed to make changes.

Then some crack team (Accenture or "young people") comes in, gets permission to make the necessary changes and gets all the credit.

Re: How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

#18

Post by agumonkey »

wpietri wrote: post #10
sabarjp wrote: post #5

"Fixing" government web has nothing to do with young people. I contracted for 5 years for the Department of Defense doing full stack web. Yes, most people I worked with were double my age or more, but many of them are very talented and eager to implement new technology. The problem is the massive, unbelievable amount of red tape to get things done. Software stacks and browsers have to get approval and re-approvals, a…

Speaking as an old, I think youth is part of the answer. One of the things I have to really work at as I get older is unlearning the things that used to be true. Given the pace of technological change, younger people have an advantage in that they have less to unlearn. > Start-up culture and tech trends just don't work at the scale of government, for much the same reasons massive corporations move glacially. This is…

I'd love to hear you list the kind of things you had to unlearn, very curious about that.

Re: How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

#19

Post by vonmoltke »

wpietri wrote: post #11
vonmoltke wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just youth worship, youth genius worship. Having been subjected to the government's definition of "agile" before[1], I can tell you that nearly everyone who was at least barely competent technically[2] thought the processes were asinine. The problem is that nobody could convince the government customers and non-technical management of this. The government in particular was bad, as their reps (GS and contractor) o…

> This team managed to do what they did because they were outsiders brought in specifically to fix a high-profile fuck-up. This is true. But having recently talked with a number of people at 18F and the USDS, I think the enormous scale of the high-profile fuckup is serving as a great example to persuade people that things should be done differently. For example, note that the government is trying to change the purcha…

The government is really making strides to improve technical acquisition, and acquisition in general. The original healthcare.gov semms to have been a wake-up call that will permanently stick and improve government service delivery. I would actually like to do a tour at some point, but I don't think they would take me.

Having said that, there is one three-letter monolith that commands the plurality of the Federal budget and shows absolutely no inclinations to change. They have resisted intrusion by USDS and 18F thus far, and I can tell you from direct experience that their information systems and policies are atrocious. Hopefully 18F, USDS, and similar efforts can eventually penetrate the Five-Sided Playpen, but it is going to be a long, hard slog.

Re: How a team of young people helped rebuild healthcare.gov

#20

Post by bcg1 »

stephengillie wrote: post #9
orf wrote: post #6

Is there any more information about the inner workings of the failed healthcare.gov site? It's quite interesting to read how horribly wrong they got it.

This has to be the 10th submarine piece I've seen about healthcare.gov.

The submarine has become the ocean.
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