Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
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Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
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Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#2From Slate back in July: an interesting background piece about the campaign's approach to staffing for data analysis.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/...
What the debacle brings to mind is the consequences of putting "idea guys" in charge of software development when there is a hard deadline.
"Orca had been conceived by two men—Romney's Director of Voter Contact Dan Centinello and the campaign's Political Director Rich Beeson."
I imagine them saying, "We shall have an app," while thinking, "How hard can it be?" While the developers were rationalizing, "Well, a web app is technically an app...and a lot easier to complete than an iPhone app, an Android app, and the web app we will still need to build for the old people with a Windows desktop."
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#3Orca had been conceived by two men—Romney's Director of Voter Contact Dan Centinello and the campaign's Political Director Rich Beeson...
To build Orca, the Romney campaign turned to Microsoft and an unnamed application consulting firm.
This sounds like a lot of failed IT projects in large corporations -- dreamed up by upper management types who don't know anything about tech, then farmed out to consultants and tech vendors for the actual implementation. The consultants and vendors then either proceed to wander in the weeds expensively due to lack of direction, or actively seize on the client's ignorance and take them for a ride.
The problem is that the people nominally in charge of the project, the upper management types, don't have the experience or expertise to know they're getting taken for a ride until it's too late. So there's no way to hold the contractors accountable, or to get the train back on the rails once it's jumped off.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#4From Slate back in July: an interesting background piece about the campaign's approach to staffing for data analysis. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/... What the debacle brings to mind is the consequences of putting "idea guys" in charge of software development when there is a hard deadline. "Orca had been conceived by two men—Romney's Director of Voter Contact Dan Centinello and the camp…
A Web App is actually the right call. It was for volunteers doing GOTV in the field, not as much for people sitting at a desktop. And you would want to be able to issue updates quickly and carefully control access -- things that are much more difficult with an App Store app.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#5The campaign could not manage launching a web app and they wanted to run the entire USA !?!?!?!
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#6From Slate back in July: an interesting background piece about the campaign's approach to staffing for data analysis. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/... What the debacle brings to mind is the consequences of putting "idea guys" in charge of software development when there is a hard deadline. "Orca had been conceived by two men—Romney's Director of Voter Contact Dan Centinello and the camp…
A Web App is actually the right call. It was for volunteers doing GOTV in the field, not as much for people sitting at a desktop. And you would want to be able to issue updates quickly and carefully control access -- things that are much more difficult with an App Store app.
Using Windows was a mistake, that's for sure.
Good thing for Democrats they didn't know about the open source ushahidi platform.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#7Some key points -
1.) 11 database servers. 1 app server 2.) Not redirecting http to https 3.) not stress tested or apparently tested in any way 4.) users got their first taste of the system the morning of the election.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#8As a conservative and a software engineer, it's heartening that they at least had a plan and tried something. The fact that it was poorly implemented and unstable doesn't surprise me. Most last minute projects end up that way.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#9Zero training? A single web server? No end users even touching the system till it's time for mission critical use? No frigging redirect of http->https? And it looks like, as has happened more than once in my professional life, people outside of the management structure saw possible risks and were blown off by those in charge.
Even if you supported Romney, this has to give you some pause about the man's management skills and who he hired to run things.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Web App is actually the right call. It was for volunteers doing GOTV in the field, not as much for people sitting at a desktop. And you would want to be able to issue updates quickly and carefully control access -- things that are much more difficult with an App Store app.
Using Windows was a mistake, that's for sure. Good thing for Democrats they didn't know about the open source ushahidi platform.
How did you determine using Windows was a mistake from the information presented in the article ?