The recent and ongoing issues plaguing the Obama Administration's attempt at the website spearheading the Affordable Care Act's initiative is a case-study in poor planning and follow through. I can relate this to IT in general. There is an old adage in the IT world which goes, "People never notice IT until something breaks." I think that saying appropriately relates to many aspects of IT.
Something TRA fights every day to change is this very notion of IT as a behind-the-scenes, shadowy, reactive force which only rears its ugly head when something breaks. We proactively partner with our clients to plan for lifecycle management, efficiency, and proactive support.
Back to the Affordable care act, if this website was planned for properly and designed with the amount of care that should go into such a huge implementation, we wouldn't be having these issues. Good luck to the cleanup team. I don't wish that sort of project on anybody.
TRA Consulting, Inc.