Will We Ever Have a Big Tech Roll Out That Doesnt Glitch or Fail?

Whats the problem? Smart people abound. Smart people get hired. Smart people go to work to develop a new system or service. Smart people hype the roll out. The public shows up, eager to buy or try. Then boom. FAIL happens. What causes this? Sure, you can say that humans are involved and humans make mistakes, but one of the few maxims I live by is that no one ever begins a project hoping to fail. Or, in the case of business, no one ever begins a project hoping to tick off the customers they want by making it hard for the customers to give them money. So why are we growing increasingly accustomed to this kind of failure and increasingly skeptical about the success of any new sort of roll out?

Lets take three examples here that have been in the news: Apples new product launches, the Affordable Care Act, and Chicagos launch of the Ventra transit card system for public transportation.

First up, lets separate Apple from the other two by one simple factor. Apple will make its money regardless of the woes its customers have trying to order its products. There is no other phenomenon I can recall like this in business and marketing, but there you have it. Theres another factor here that differentiates Apple from the other two examples as well. No one, repeat no one, has to buy an Apple product. In the other two examples, there are, in some instances, mandates, involved.

That said, Apples product launches are notorious for disappointing users who arent willing to go to great lengths to get in on the first wave. Online ordering should theoretically take care of this, aside from supply and demand issues (if there is no product, you cant sell it- but thats another issue). But, Apples online ordering system can come to a screeching halt with just about any new product launch, or at least the ones that involve iOS devices. Is this a case of being greedy and just not ramping up enough bandwidth to handle automated purchasing? Or is it a case that the databases that run these ordering systems just cant scale up enough to handle the load? I dont purport to know the answer, and Apple is obviously comfortable enough with the way things are that there isnt a public facing move to make things smoother (like I said they will get their money in the end).

Going back to the human thing for a moment, theres also a psychology here that companies selling products depend on, or at the least hope for. When something becomes hard to get or unattainable, some want it all the more. Standing in line for tickets to an event used to have a certain romance, but that has certainly lost its luster as it transitioned into online ordering. Of course, plenty will now stand in line at an Apple Store and Im guessing well see that shortly when new iPads go up for sale.

Transitioning away from products no one has to buy, and to things that might be necessary like the Affordable Care Act and Ventra cards, lets take a look at those two fails.