>I wish I could land contracts like this one. Can you imagine building an app that the client will only need for 1 day, and you still get paid even if the thing does not work? The chance for fraud is huge. Who would even allow this? The people pitching this must have been some very talented salespeople...
Anecdotally, this is exactly how large consultancies, particularly those who specialize in serving the public sector, operate.
1) Deploy an army of "talented" salespeople to establish favorable executive-level relationships by exploiting every available loophole to provide trips, gifts, dinners and sporting events. Once the top has been won over, everyone below will fall in line.
2) Write contracts meeting the barest minimum interpretation of the requirements. Design them to specifically exploit uninformed procurement departments which are better equipped to source millions in copier paper or bolts than complex software.
3) Farm out any actual deliverable to the cheapest sub available nationwide. Ideally, you will have hidden travel and per diem for the talent in #2 leaving you free to fly in folks from the cheapest parts of the country.
4) Upon encountering any serious issue once work is underway simply scapegoat the current PM and shuffle in a new one.
5) Go to #1 employing the latest project as a reference that likely won't even be properly checked. In the event that diligence is performed, feed them to one of your friendly executives.
Was this a talented sales pitch or just your standard politics and an old boys club connection? No mention of the consulting company.. If it was my campaign, I'd hang them out to dry.
Seems the IT staff was out of their depth but there were some very serious and very fundamental issues if the users were confused as it sounds.
I say it as a joke but a barbed one: this guy thinks he was fit to manage a nation when he couldn't knock out a web app for 30000 users!?! Really?
Fortunatey, it's not the president's job to "manage a nation."
As a side note, an almost do-nothing president would be the best kind. (And, as a side note to the side note, that was what was intended when the office was created.)
And it is worse in the US because the client is the Romney organisation not the Republican Party - and it definately wont be around next time to learn the lesson.
Anecdotally, this is exactly how large consultancies, particularly those who specialize in serving the public sector, operate.
1) Deploy an army of "talented" salespeople to establish favorable executive-level relationships by exploiting every available loophole to provide trips, gifts, dinners and sporting events. Once the top has been won over, everyone below will fall in line.
2) Write contracts meeting the barest minimum interpretation of the requirements. Design them to specifically exploit uninformed procurement departments which are better equipped to source millions in copier paper or bolts than complex software.
3) Farm out any actual deliverable to the cheapest sub available nationwide. Ideally, you will have hidden travel and per diem for the talent in #2 leaving you free to fly in folks from the cheapest parts of the country.
4) Upon encountering any serious issue once work is underway simply scapegoat the current PM and shuffle in a new one.
5) Go to #1 employing the latest project as a reference that likely won't even be properly checked. In the event that diligence is performed, feed them to one of your friendly executives.