Two More Thoughtful Analyses of the Obamacare Website

A few thoughtful people are now beginning to offer analysis of the Healthcare.gov debacle.

A commenter over on Marginal Revolution submitted this insight:

When you even contemplate bringing an old legacy system into a large-scale web project, you should do load testing on that system as part of the feasibility process before you ever write a line of production code, because if those old servers can’t handle the load, your whole project is dead in the water if you are forced to rely on them.

Ah, the wisdom of experience!  Perhaps the desired design is not possible.  Let's find out first before we head down this path.

Meanwhile, Arnold Kling has the same gut reaction that I did.

There is zero chance that rewriting five million lines of code is the answer. Either the solution is a lot simpler or there is no solution other than to start over.

As I noted a couple of posts down, not much new has been learned about managing software projects since Fred Brooks experience in the 1960s.  He concludes his analysis with this helpful advice:

For Christmas, someone should give President Obama and Secretary Sebelius a copy of The Mythical Man-month.