I really wish that we would see detailed analysis of failed systems, if for no other reasons than to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future. I'd hope that technical people that were engaged in building systems that didn't work well would share their experiences, whether from development, deployment, administration, or even operations. I ran across a piece on the lessons of Orca, the web application that Mitt Romney's campaign used, or tried to use, to manage their operations.

It seems that there were a number of problems with this system, which is almost stunning. I'd think this is a well known process that includes a number of pieces of technology that are built into so many systems these days. Integration is never smooth, and the short time frame of an election campaigns doesn't leave a lot of time for testing, much of which apparently didn't get completed. The article talks about many of the same things that I've seen mentioned in the past when applications don't work as expected. A lack of training, a dearth of hardware, tooling that doesn't work, all of these have been reported for years in many software engineering journals and articles.

Read the rest of "Failure Lessons" at SQLServerCentral.