> I used to do development for a DOD project.

> I used to do development for a DOD project. At the outset of the project, it's often not clear what you're trying to do will even work. It might not even be clear what you should be trying to do. Doesn't this just sound like the contractor promising things it can't deliver? This seems like one of the major endemic problems, especially with ridiculously advanced projects like this. R&D is R&D. Contracts are contracts. Research, by nature, fails often. Contracts, by nature, are expected to succeed. You can't (or rather shouldn't) sign a contract for something that you don't know you can do, let alone whether you can do it within the time / money limits. To me, that seems borderline fraudulent, and is a form of lock-in. The clients don't know they're getting screwed, but when they finally do know, it's too expensive for them to switch contractors and they're stuck with you. Obviously it's partially an incentives issue - it's economically rational for companies to do that. It's also probably a rational career move for officers to pitch a super-mega-awesome device that doesn't exist yet but sounds awesome. So that needs to change. What happened to trying before buying? I have a sense that this used to be the case pre-WW2 but I don't really have any proof to back that up.

Posted by makmanalp on Apr 3, 2015, 2:56 PM

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