Who built ORCA? That's the wrong question
Ten days after an extremely disappointing election, the pundit class is pointing fingers in every direction. What caused the Romney loss? Was it the ground game? The media putting its thumb on the scales? Failure to press Benghazi as an issue? Ideology? Apathy? Gaffes? There's been plenty of good and bad pontificating on all of the above. Certainly the much-vaunted Project Orca was a failure. But why? I'd like to take a closer look today, and address the recent "who built it" scapegoat effort. As someone who has managed web-based software application products and projects since there have been web-based software applications, and a Project Orca observer on the ground in Ohio on election day, I thought I'd bring my perspective to the problem. Not to spoil the ending, but I believe that the application itself was the least of Team Romney's problems on election day, and were overshadowed by problems with deployment and fatal problems with the concept itself.