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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jttmab who wrote (13358)	5/24/2002 1:47:48 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

Your competent software engineering group is that far off? The software group was not even consulted. No one in it was asked for any input at all or shown any materials the proposal team was generating. Or if you tell me that the bid was made without input from software engineering, what does that say about competence of the management? Not much. What did you say about firing incompetents in the private sector? Doesn't always work. Proposals are notorious for screw-ups like this. In most companies I've seen, their job is just to get the contract. So money is lost on the contract? Well, obviously those who executed the contract screwed up. Not their fault. It is rare in large companies (in my experience, anyway) for anyone on the proposal team to actually work the contract. (In defense of proposal teams, let me say that I have also worked on them. Tough, nasty job demanding huge amounts of work and research and long, long hours. Far too little information is the norm, so you have to guess at things you have no way of knowing. Because the gov't can't give info to one contractor with giving it to all, their normal procedure is to refuse to answer questions from contractors who are then forced to work from somewhat incomplete, ambiguous RFP (Request For Proposal) documents. The proposal team is under pressure to get the contract, so assumptions involving price and schedule are forced towards the low side. If you don't do it, the proposal manger will. Overall, it's amazing things aren't worse.) Sounds to me like nearly everyone that was involved in the bid, review, and approval of it must have been sacked. Wrong again! The guy who did the software estimates is now retired. But he did it voluntarily. He wasn't pushed. He was old enough and had enough years in. I agree. This case is bloody amazing. It's actually the worst I've seen. But there it is. Oh yes. By the original estimates, we were done in mid-1999. The fact is, we're still at it. The end is in sight, though. The largest part of my time now is spent documenting. The test group occasionally runs across a weird corner case bug for me to find and fix. This thing looks like it actually will be ready for its next scheduled launch date. Which will be 3 years late. And my software module is now about 10 times larger than it was originally believed it would be because of requirements creep.