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Failed Iowa Dem caucus app (not political): 2 months and $60k

gnahc79

gnahc79

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Politics aside, you get what you pay for. Sounds like they had a handful of shoddy contractors cobble together the app.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3m33x/heres-the-shadow-inc-app-that-failed-in-iowa-last-night
The New York Times reported that the app wasn't tested widely before it was deployed, and Miller said it's obvious that the app was rushed. That Shadow pushed a new build of the app just two days before the caucus seems to suggest the company was tinkering with it until the last minute. Installing an app via TestFairy or TestPilot is nonstandard and usually comes with a warning message from the phone's operating system.
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https://www.fastcompany.com/9046010...ecting-wild-dots-about-the-iowa-caucus-fiasco
NPR’s Kate Payne and Miles Parks had the first real story about the Shadow app, which was reportedly developed in only two months.
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Mind, I don't know the requirements, but $60K should have been more than enough. Why this had to be more than a few pages in PHP, a couple of reports, and a AWS box rented for 2 days of work is beyond me.
 
berth said:
Mind, I don't know the requirements, but $60K should have been more than enough. Why this had to be more than a few pages in PHP, a couple of reports, and a AWS box rented for 2 days of work is beyond me.
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Unfortunately that's probably the exact mindset this Shadow Inc company had. To get something like this up and running at an enterprise quality is more than $60K and 2 months. $60k and 2 months is something that my interns would do and show as a proof of concept. We'd never roll that out as-is.

The fact that they allowed the app to be downloaded to personal smartphones vs supplying secured smartphones is a noob mistake.
 
If you take a look at who the key players are at Shadow, you'll see why it was botched so badly.

Like I said, shady instead of shoddy.
 
It’s funny how those of us in the middle of Silicon Valley are mistrustful of technology while people in Iowa wanted to be more “high technology” by using a shoddy phone app to consolidate their party’s election results.

I’m curious how much Microsoft was charging them to do the same thing 4 years ago.
 
$30k/month is enough for 3-4 quality developers and its certainly possible to build an app in 2months. but I dont really c any money left for QA. if u swapped all but 1 developer for junior devs, maybe theres enough $$. but the product would be shit because of all the time spent baby sitting junior developers.

ya, im not surprised this crashed and burned.
 
Without knowing all that the app was supposed to do, it's impossible to really determine what it would take and how many man hours it would take.
 
Climber said:
Without knowing all that the app was supposed to do, it's impossible to really determine what it would take and how many man hours it would take.
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Apparently the option they included that was supposed to make waffles this morning for the winning candidate's team was what gummed up the works.
 
wannabe said:
It’s funny how those of us in the middle of Silicon Valley are mistrustful of technology while people in Iowa wanted to be more “high technology” by using a shoddy phone app to consolidate their party’s election results.

I’m curious how much Microsoft was charging them to do the same thing 4 years ago.
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Because we have a glimpse behind the curtain and see how all of this shit is cobbled together with various technologies that kind of work, and very few put an effort in to proper QA.
 
gnahc79 said:
Unfortunately that's probably the exact mindset this Shadow Inc company had. To get something like this up and running at an enterprise quality is more than $60K and 2 months. $60k and 2 months is something that my interns would do and show as a proof of concept. We'd never roll that out as-is.

The fact that they allowed the app to be downloaded to personal smartphones vs supplying secured smartphones is a noob mistake.
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Fully agree!
 
Climber said:
Without knowing all that the app was supposed to do, it's impossible to really determine what it would take and how many man hours it would take.
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my minimum bid on a quality app that requires a backend is $40k. but I have standards, won't publish crap, and also like to get paid :laughing

ive never actually built one for $40k though. client always want more and end up over $100k.
 
There's more than just a phone-resident precinct app. There's the host side and the apps it needs to provide Party bigwigs with the information they need in the format they want. There's training and doc for precinct users, for host administrators and users. Of course, there's testing both for functionality and scalability. And don't forget audit capability. There's gotta be a way to be absolutely sure that what comes out as the end result is what went in at the precincts.
 
It was more than $60K.

Pete's campaign gave another ~$42K to Shadow, Inc.

90
 
that could have been for Pete's own campaign using something from Shadow right?
 
gnahc79 said:
Unfortunately that's probably the exact mindset this Shadow Inc company had. To get something like this up and running at an enterprise quality is more than $60K and 2 months. $60k and 2 months is something that my interns would do and show as a proof of concept. We'd never roll that out as-is.

The fact that they allowed the app to be downloaded to personal smartphones vs supplying secured smartphones is a noob mistake.
Click to expand...

sideloaded. not downloaded.

they didn't even go through the process to make it available via the Google Store.
 
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