Eric Wise

Business & .NET

$170 million??!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081701485.html

So the FBI failed a software project that ran $170 million. I for one am stunned at the total lack of competance in government and the greed/idiocy inherent in contract firms.

Tell you what FBI, I'm sure that we can work out an arrangement where you hire the staff of Codebetter.com plus a few key figures from the blogosphere, We'll put you together a working system and only charge you say... $85 million. =)

Published Aug 18 2006, 11:24 AM by Eric Wise

Comments

Greg said:

They can have me for a year at a $2m rate :)

# August 18, 2006 11:59 AM

Jeremy D. Miller said:

At the height of the boom in 2000 I asked my boss for another dev on my project and was told the only available person would be from AC for $300 an hour. I offered to work weekends for $150 but didn't get a taker.

# August 18, 2006 12:15 PM

Brad said:

The biggest problem with the government is that projects are awarded to the lowest bidder. If I wanted to build a complete infrastructure for the FBI to run on their private internet I would go directly to the source and hire Microsoft or Google at whatever they said it would cost.

# August 18, 2006 12:32 PM

Wyatt Barnett said:

Ever worked in a government IT operation? If so, this is not even a suprise. Actually, more suprising is that they only blew $170 million. That is really substandard for a gov't agency.

# August 18, 2006 1:44 PM

Travis said:

It all depends on the amount of $$$ passed back to the agencies taking bids...

# August 18, 2006 3:52 PM

Jon Galloway said:

Another advertisement for waterfall development, huh?

# August 19, 2006 12:38 AM

Eric Wise said:

*chuckle* It's not like Waterfall Development never works, it certainly can in the right situations. Just like AGILE can fail in the wrong ones.

This is likely a case of:

A. The client having no idea what they want.
B. Scope creep
C. Contract company looking to maximize the cash flow instead of doing what is right for the client.
D. Contract company developers not being empowered to work together and work directly with the client to get the scope/spec right.
E. No formal testing process.

# August 19, 2006 10:09 AM

karl said:

I would love to know who the contract company is/was...anyone have any clue?

# August 20, 2006 10:29 AM

Bill Arnette said:

A question I have is what is the "Trial and error/we will know it when we see it" approach the FBI said that SAIC took in developing the system. Is this an allusion to an agile approach that didn't work?

# August 24, 2006 10:20 AM