The affordable health care web site failure is constantly on the news and there are some interesting articles:
http://www.cio.com/article/743366/6_Software_Development_Lessons_From_Healthcare.gov_s_Failed_Launch?page=1&taxonomyId=3038
There will be more like this and we should learn from the mistakes of the past, but do we?
As I read Matt’s article, I am struck by how many of the things he cites as being things I’ve heard before. Further many of these are not technical failure, but what I would call management issues. We talk about better skills in testing and development. Maybe, we need to educate people better in school what is possible with computers. Some people expect to much from software, but as the young generations (who grew up with computers) come into leadership, hopefully we’ll have less of these events. Unfortunately, I really expect such situations are human nature, so we will always have them.
breakingembeddedsoftware 