Fixing a software disaster!

I was thinking about the mess the www.healthcare.gov is in. Somewhere in the higher echelons of the Obama Administration, there must be tense crisis management meetings going on with the newly hired IT experts and consultants giving their evaluations and recommendations.  As a software developer with many years of experience, I find that the inevitable resolution the experts come up with for any troubled software system is a major rewriteof the whole system!  This happens for two reasons. First, the evaluation of the problem software is done from the perspective of ‘why is it so bad?’ instead of ‘what is right with it, and how the wrongs can be fixed?’  The second reason is that the modifications to legacy code is tedious and painful as it requires time to learn the existing system, and the changes often end up bringing up new issues (like it happens with the house restoration  projects on HDTV) Once the decision to go ahead with a major rewrite is made, the next step, the announcement of the ‘new release schedule’, often dooms the whole effort from the start.  It is suicidal for the top management to say that fixing the existing system would take as much time as it took to implement it. Therefore, the hapless project manager of the rewrite effort, is forced to come up with a totally unrealistic schedule to appease everyone for the moment (ex. Healthcare.gov working fine by the end of November).  The project will then go on, even if it is on the right path, missing milestones and schedules, rolling heads, and destroying careers!

I would be surprised if the healthcare.gov, as it is defined now, gets fully operational within another year.  There will be promises made and not kept, and elections lost. It is going to be ugly.

Playing it safe

Despite of all the misgivings of Israel, I feel that the Iran nuclear deal reached yesterday is a remarkable accomplishment. I cannot help notice how U.S. foreign policy and diplomatic relationships have changed since John Kerry took over from Hilary Clinton the office of the Secretary of State of USA.  In addition to the deal with Iran, Kerry was instrumental in getting an agreement from Syria to destroy her arsenal of WMDs.  In addition, he has initiated talks on working out a solution for the Israel Palestine conflict (despite the attempts by Israel to torpedo it).  Kerry is also more focused on USA relationships with our Middle Eastern allies like Saudi Arabia who were taken for granted during the years of Hilary Clinton (Clinton visited Saudi Arabia once in her tenure of four years, versus Kerry three times already!) I guess John Kerry can take risks while Hilary had to play it safe for her run for U.S. Presidency in 2016.