Re: Ada scandal makes front page of Wash. Post business section

[eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)]

     I just saw some more information on the problems with the FAA
enroute system, and concluded you would have to be seriously crazy to
even attempt some of the "requirements changes" on this contract in
any other language.

     The FAA moderization is in two parts.  The tower/approach systems
upgrade has completed development and is considered a major success.
However, when the enroute system was started it was to provide
upgrades to the 14 enroute centers and run on mainframes.  It is now
supposed to support a smaller number of centers (with larger
workloads) by distributing most of the work to individual RS/6000's
for each controller. (I think the decided to close 6 enroute centers,
then reconsidered some after the Long Island site was hit by the Ma
Bell crash.)

     Current (published) projection is that this will cause a 14 month
slip in the enroute PROGRAM at the same contracted cost, but IBM wants
a guarentee of no more major changes.  Wouldn't you?  The articles I
saw implied that the redistribution of functionality was not a
problem, but the FAA did not want to deploy the system until the
support documentation and test tools for the new workstations were
done.  (I don't even know if the test tools are hardware or software.)
Anyone in the trenches want to add more?


--

					Robert I. Eachus

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