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skullz [soylentnews.org] writes:

I've watched the ACA federal and state website roll-outs with trepidation as one botched IT project crashes and burns after another. More information is coming out about Minnesota's exchange and lo and behold, poor communication, lack of fundamentals, and bureaucracy seem to be contributing factors.

From the NPR How A Series Of Mistakes Hobbled Minnesota's Health Exchange [npr.org] story we learn that the users were the first to actually test the website:

What Minnesotans did not know is they were testing the site. There wasn't time for consumer testing before the site went live.

Michael Krigsman, a consultant who specializes in diagnosing and preventing IT project failures, says testing is key.

"That is so screwed up. You can quote me on that," he says. "This is one of these things that's so foundational. It's like why do we need to breathe the air?"

Yes, yes it is, Mr. Krigsman.

Propublica has another article which covers Minnesota as well as three other state exchanges. [propublica.org]

Having been on projects with shifting scope, compressed timeframes, and arbitrary milestones I feel for the developers who worked on these websites and am a little depressed that we are still doing this in 2014. When will the managers learn? Or at least listen?

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