So whats the biggest F*** up your boss has made?

We engineer and develop monitor control panels for various applications. The president of our company, is adamant about getting a mobile application control within several projects.

While this may could be practical, we don't have the man power to do it internally. Our programmer doesn't do any mobile app development. So naturally we look to outside companies; by we, I mean our CFO and Engineering manager. Neither of which understand the slightest thing about app development, programming or the idea of hiring app developers.

So the president has a bug up his ass one fateful October morning and demands movement. Our IT Dept, Engineering Dept, and some sales people assemble in the conference room to hear the situation. We have 24 hours to find how to get this app done.
The next day we reassemble, the typical response was, I contacted an application development house and they're putting together a proposal. My response was to use an in house project coordinator and outsource the entire thing; use the web and freelance sites to get this project accomplished.

Our 24 hour turnaround answer: we went with a company that our Engineering manager had heard of. They were local, but they aren't known for mobile application development.

Long story short, we're 28 months into this, and have seen this app function successfully a half dozen times, on an iPhone 4. It does not function on any other iPhone hardware. There has never been a single mention, or question, of what iOS that it functions on, only hardware types.
It does not function on Android or Windows devices, and, every demo has been very problematic. And we've just passed a quarter of a million dollars investment and there undoubtedly will he more requested.

I think my CFO'S heart was in the right place however this was a bad decision from thr start. It's turned into a side show circus for the rest of us. Fun to watch but you know the outcome isn't going to he pretty.

/r/sysadmin Thread