A few big lessons from the Botched Healthcare Rollout
Not too long ago, I lauded the NASA project manager behind the Space Shuttle Endeavor launch who, with the President standing next to him and a hopeful nation watching, said “It’s not ready” and delayed the launch at the last minute.
If only every project manager had the same courage
Just imagine how much different the healthcare.gov rollout would have been if the project manager behind it had the nerve to say “It’s not ready” and delayed its launch.
In the case of the NASA launch, saying “No” protected the lives of 4-5 astronauts. In the case of the healthcare.gov launch, saying “Yes” produced suffering for countless users looking for medical assistance, forced the President into numerous apologetic press conferences, and gave the national media a massive debacle to obsess over (one that is far from over and showing no signs of abating anytime soon).
Don’t get me wrong. Delaying the healthcare.gov launch would hardly have been a perfect option either. It would have created a major problem for the bevy of companies under contract to deliver “on time.” Indeed, they would have been officially “late;” the cardinal sin of IT system deployment. But that hardly compares with their current situation- where they are not only “late” in delivering the promised functionality, but the whole team (and all of us in IT by extension) are labeled “incompetent.”
And if that’s not bad enough, the project’s key stakeholder, President Barack Obama, is enjoying this same “incompetent” label in the public discourse as he repeatedly holds special press conferences to apologize for the “glitchy” website. (The most liberal use of “glitchy” I’ve ever seen.)
What makes this colossal screw up worthy of still more commentary is my guarantee to you that the project manager (and at least a dozen of his/her lieutenants) knew the site wouldn’t work. This sort of major F-up is never a surprise. But still they launched the site on deadline anyway to try to make their stakeholder happy—if only for a minute.
With such an obviously faulty implementation the project manager can hardly plead ignorance. I can just imagine what the system test review meetings must have been like in late September. The front-line testers must have been screaming BLOODY MURDER about all the problems with the system. (That is if they were testing at all… but how could we even joke about something like that.)
Seriously, the project manager had to have known the site would not work. But still, they made the decision to launch, bowing to what must have been incredible pressure from the White House.
Clearly it’s not just the IT team’s fault
Yes, the IT team leadership made the wrong decision by not standing up to the White House and delaying the launch. But I’m equally convinced that the President got exactly what he asked for.
I can imagine the late night phone calls and emails from the White House making it clear to the contractors that they had better launch on time. With the Republicans looking to shoot down Obamacare every way possible, the White House must have made it very clear that if the teams behind healthcare.gov ever wanted to work for the US government again they had better get this right. No excuses accepted.
Well, when the President of the United States says he won’t take “No” for an answer then as the IT guy you are pretty much stuck in the ultimate catch-22. Come out with the truth that the site isn’t ready and your next assignment is cleaning toilets at Guantanamo. Come out with a faulty website and system and maybe, just maybe, you get the chance to say “I told you so” as you feverishly work to repair the situation while the President takes the flack.
I suppose it’s not that hard to see how we ended up here after all
Unfortunately the way out of this debacle isn’t so clear. No matter how much optimism the President projects at his press conferences, no matter how many times he reminds us the Affordable Care Act is “more than a website,” no matter how many times he tells us this is a long-term project that will eventually work, one point becomes obvious every time he defends the debacle: Even if your project could succeed in the long term, you will never be able to shake a disastrous start. A poor start? Maybe. But a colossal F-up? No way.
This harsh reality has nothing to do with the (often) overly-sensationalistic nature of our media or even the (sometimes) short-sighted nature of IT evaluations. When you screw up your implementations, you create a crisis of confidence among your users and your stakeholders. And you can’t troubleshoot these relationships as easily as you can troubleshoot a few lines of faulty code.
These relationships matter more than the project itself
I’m sure the healthcare.gov website will reach functionality in the long run. But it’s unlikely the project manager behind it (or his key stakeholder) will ever fully recover from launching such a faulty project.
A shame too, as this massive debacle could have been avoided if just two things were in place:
- If the project manager behind the healthcare.gov implementation had the courage to stand up and say “No.”
- If the White House had created an environment where it was possible to tell the truth about this project in the first place.
If there’s one silver lining to this debacle, it’s the wonderful learning experience we’ve all received over the last few months. We now have, right in front of us, one of history’s clearest examples of a truly crucial IT lesson:
It’s better to launch with nothing than to launch with a faulty project
