Why ObamaCare is Failing

--by Robert Arvay
(this commentary is freely available for reprint)

 Enough with the ideology.  Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.  If you hire incompetents to build a jet airliner, the plane will either never take off, or it will crash.  That is so obvious that even an incompetent manager can predict it.  The same holds true for software design.  Incompetent project managers cannot— repeat, cannot, put together a functional, working program.  Period.

There is no mystery to it.  The science of project management is ancient.  It was used to build the pyramids.  During the twentieth century, it advanced by leaps and bounds.  With the advent of the space rocket program, Murphy’s Law was discovered, which says that if anything can go wrong, it will.  Computer software can be just as complex.

While there is no mystery to project management, there is a lot of complicated, hard work involved.  Yes, it is rocket science. 

From the very beginning, the entire project must be mapped out on a flow chart.  The flow chart is a maze of boxes, each connected to the others by arrows, showing which steps must be taken, when, and by whom.  Within each box are other boxes, showing who is responsible for what.  Every step and sub-step must be accounted for in excruciating detail.  If not, then failure is inevitable.  For the project manager, that is a lot of complicated, hard work.  Did we say it is hard work?

Ironically, the project manager for a computer program does not have to know very much about computers.  That seems odd, but let’s face it, not one person involved in the space program knows everything about every piece of equipment on board the rocket.

What the project manager must do is to educate herself on the important principles, and then to ensure that each and every box on the flow chart is accounted for by one, yes one, responsible person per box.

The first time I ever got involved in managing a project— and it was much simpler than the ObamaCare rollout— my result was a colossal failure.  Fortunately, I got it right the second time, but only after learning some brutal lessons.  Most of them involved accountability.

My mistake early on was to trust the people whom I should have been holding accountable.  That was fatal to the project.  At every point of the project, someone who is not personally associated with the workers, must scrutinize whether the “box” on the flow chart has been properly completed.  The worker must be able to prove that he completed every feature of his part of the project.  Every worker must know, ahead of time, that management will not simply take their word for it.  Each worker must know exactly when each of his deadlines is to be met.  And each must know that no excuses will be accepted.   None.  If and when a problem arises, the worker must immediately report that.  And he must be listened to.  Intently.

The hardest working member of the project team must be the project manager.  She must constantly read the progress reports, quickly identify any bottlenecks, and promptly and aggressively resolve them.  If this means being awakened at 3 AM because a supply truck did not arrive on schedule, then so be it.

During the course of a large scale project, occasions will arise when people must be fired.  Whether that person is the janitor or a master engineer, failure due to incompetent actions must be quickly and decisively identified, and when necessary, punished.  The person being fired must be the right one, but the word “fairness” does not enter into it.  The phrase, “he did his best” is irrelevant.

Large scale project management is not for the faint of heart.  Too much is at stake.  The project will never succeed unless every nut and bolt is in its exact, precise place.  Jet airliners do not fly on excuses.

Barack Obama did none of this.  Kathleen Sebelius did none of this.  Had they done their jobs, they would have been able to document early on, what was going wrong, and what was being done to correct matters.  The computer project would have succeeded.

Not only did they not do their jobs, they seem not to care.  They blame others.  They disavow any personal responsibility.  They deny that any part of the massive failure had anything to do with them.  They deny knowing anything.

When the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, they did not wait until a catastrophic collapse to bring in the “A” Team.  They did not blame the Assyrians.  And as for excuses, anyone who was negligent in their duties made their excuses to the guy with the headsman’s axe.

Project management is a dirty, brutal, and necessary affair.  Politics is just dirty.  And it was politics, not sound management theory, that caused the failure of the ObamaCare computer program.  But, then, it was politics that designed the entire ObamaCare law to begin with. 

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