Design 101 or Why Adding People to a Late Project Makes It Later

Being a web developer who can honestly say the sites yours truly builds for clients work well, is not that hard to do if these prerequisites are adhered to before doing anything of significance:  (Mythical Man Month rules. :))

1. Ask questions before doing anything is key because the client knows more about their business then you'll ever know.
2. Understand what is REALLY required before doing anything of significance (plan, plan, plan).
3. Possess the prerequisite tech skills needed to get the job done.
4. Make sure an adequate budget is in place in order to get the job done.
5. Determine the right size number of people needed to get the job done.
6. Set in place a realistic time frame to get the job done.
7. Doing due diligence in creating a valid web workflow that truly reflects how the client does business is the single most important thing a web developer does for any given client. (See No. 1)
8. Institute a modular design set that scales and deals effectively with the vagaries of the real world and that leverages the client workflow through ease of navigation and fast page displays. 
9. Test the pilot extensively to make sure it works prior to introducing the site to the public This is why modular design sets rules.
10. Last but not least, as Fred Brooks says in his masterwork Mythical Man Month  ...
11. Adding more people to a late project makes it later.

The many links connected to BRT shows off why this little lesson in web development rings true but not, sad to say, Healthcare.gov the $400 million dollar project that will get better but at what cost? while healthcare itself (doctors, patients, insurance et al), the real monster residing in the back room, is a different situation altogether. 


WASHINGTON — In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience,” he told them.

Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized.

For the past 12 days, a system costing more than $400 million and billed as a one-stop click-and-go hub for citizens seeking health insurance has thwarted the efforts of millions to simply log in. The growing national outcry has deeply embarrassed the White House, which has refused to say how many people have enrolled through the federal exchange.

Even some supporters of the Affordable Care Act worry that the flaws in the system, if not quickly fixed, could threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, which depends on throngs of customers to spread the risk and keep prices low.

“These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.' ”

Any question as to why single payer is, in the long run, the only real solution to the fubar known as heathcare?

Addendum: Seems BRT was spot on regarding the slow motion disaster known as healthcare.gov

The first real step towards a fix will most likely be the appointment of a lead team that will be able to survey the problems and put an action plan in place. Whether this lead will be a company already in the process or some sort of small supercommittee of techies remains to be seen, but it is clear that the whole "by committee" method of design has not succeeded.

Click bit.ly/1czOovO to see a list of the main "contributors" to the site, complete with lobbying monies.

To this writer, the notion the site is too big to succeed is bogus. The reason why this environment is suffering is because the little guidance set seen at the top of this post was not followed, something Fred Brooks honestly talked about when he did a successor to the IBM 360, the raison d'ete of the book, which failed because the principles espoused in his book were not adhered to. As Fred so famously said, THERE IS NO SILVER BULLET.