Bill Lear: > >Also, I believe that the degree of complexity of large projects was >simply misunderstood. Getting a small team to work together is >do-able, but the costs just don't scale very well. > Last night's TV news had an item about the "scandal" surrounding cost overruns and delays on Medicare automation. They expect the project to be finished in *seven* years. This follows acknowledgement that the IRS automation has been a total fiasco. Finally, there is open discussion about the problems implementing some of the draconian features of the new welfare legislation because the systems requirements to do cross-state policing of eligibility are too daunting for the forseeable future. This is the sort of systems development projects that I have been working on for 28 years and they present a completely different set of problems than creating shrink-wrapped software like a word-processor. The difficulties cut to the heart of the contradictions of capitalism and have little to do with psychology or whether such activity is more like novel-writing than engineering. The problem is simply that there are powerful impulses in any capitalist institution--including government agencies and universities--to set completely arbitrary deadlines based on incomplete specifications. Management structures in corporations encourage forced marches and I have been on many. There was one exception to this. I worked on an automation of an employee savings/retirement plan at Mobil Oil in the late 1970s. This plan incorporated all sorts of subterfuges to allow top management to shelter income. One senior consultant I worked with volunteered the opinion that he felt like a felon working on the project. Since the project had top priority and since Mobil was pretty cash-infused at the time, they made a decision to nail down the specifications with exactitude before any programming was done. In other words they had a detailed blueprint before any construction took place. Next, they staffed the project adequately. Finally, they came up with realistic schedules. It was a four year job and came in on time. Mostly, this type of procedure is not followed. Projects are started with incomplete specifications. They are understaffed and target-dates are completely arbitrary. This tendency existed throughout the 60s and 70s and has only accelerated in the late 80s and 90s when corporations decide to take shortcuts in the face of competition. One of the reasons socialism is such an appealing idea is that procedures will be common across organizational lines. This will allow software to be shared. If there was a single American university system, admissions procedures would be simplified. Instead of having 10,000 computer programmers working on separate systems at Columbia, Yale, U. of Cal, etc., there would be 500 or so developing software for the entire institution. The same thing would of course be true for financial and manufacturing institutions. One bank, one automobile company, one steel company, etc., all owned by the people. No advertising, no public relations, no separate health and savings plans. I have a book at home called "The Waste of Capitalism" or something like that which details this stuff. I should try to read it and report on it. Louis Proyect
