Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I take the time to describe an old tool that helps us do what is asked. There is room for doing more, but we should at least do what is asked.

There is an old tool called a compliance matrix. For mathematicians, I apologize for the word “matrix” as this is a table of items, not a matrix. This is a simple tool. A table in a word processor works as does a spreadsheet.

One column of the compliance matrix contains the requirements or the things with which we seek to comply. Take the text of a requirements statement, “You must do A, B, C, and D.” Put A, B, C, and D in one cell each. We now have one requirement in each row in the left-most cell of the table. Now we have a list of the requirements going down the left side of the table. The remainder of each row shows that we have complied with or met that requirement. These could be statements or pointers to other things that actually meet the requirement.

Viola. We have a table that lists each requirement and how we meet each requirement. If there is a requirement that we do not meet, that is obvious as there is a big blank spot in the table. Back to work. Meet that requirement.

This is the simplest form of the compliance matrix. It is built manually and slowly. If there are 20,000 requirements, and there are systems that have that many requirements, this method may cost a lot of money and bore someone to tears. There are fancy applications (what we used to call software) that folks sell that make the compliance matrix easier to build and use when the requirements go into the thousands. Fewer than a hundred requirements? Just build a table in a word processor.

Compliance is not exciting. It is necessary when I am paid to meet requirements. The compliance matrix is an old tool that helps.

by Dwayne Phillips

As a writer and just about anyone else, we must be flexible in a rigid manner. The same is true for almost every adjective and its antonym.

A writer must be flexible. Except when the writer must be rigid. Except when exceptions arise.

The same goes for just about any adjective and its antonym and any person.

A person should be open to new ideas. Except when that person should be closed to frivolous ideas.

A person should be frivolous. Except when that person should be serious.

A person should be disciplined. Except when that person should be naive.

We could go on and on with these adjectives and their opposites. This unruly rule applies for almost all adjectives. I find a few for which this unruly rule does not apply. Those are important un-rules, but they are few.

by Dwayne Phillips

Data, data, data. Enough already. Just tell me something I don’t know.

• Data is the new oil.
• Data is the new bacon.
• Data will fuel the economies of the future.
• Data will determine the winner of the next world war.
• Data, data, data.

I work with data. On some days, some folks call me a data scientist. I work with artificial intelligence and machine learning (I have for 40 years—yes, I am that old). I’m sick of data. Data schmata, just tell me something I don’t know.

This links to an article about using data to teach kids how to hit a baseball. DATA? They are using cameras to record how kids swing a stick and showing them ways to improve. Howard Hughes did that in the 1930s. Today, however, this is DATA.

Gosh. It is information or knowledge or wisdom or something. Tell the kid to step straight ahead and keep his head down. If the kid can resist all natural reactions to a sphere hurled at him, he will hit. DATA? Give me a break.

We have records of all sorts of things. Who called whom on the telephone. Who ate what and when. Who read what. Who wrote what. Who stood on what street corner on what day. Where did we go after going to the grocery store. What did we buy at the grocery store (hint, we probably bought groceries).

We now call all that old stuff DATA. Excuse me, I feel the need to go to the bathroom.

by Dwayne Phillips

Overwhelmed with many tasks and people? Grab a clipboard and a pencil.

This one may require a clipboard with a bigger clip that has a bigger capacity than most, but the basic tools will suffice.

There are too many tasks and too many people. Emails and text messages and notes from here and there are flooding in a piling high in my mind. And then someone asks me, “What about that thing I asked you last week? Is it finished?” Huh?

For each message, write a note on a piece of paper and clip it to the board. Scribble on that piece of paper. Write just enough references and pointers so details can be found. Date every scribble and record all names. When the inevitable question arrives, flip through the paper to find the answer. Scribble the facts of the question on the paper. When something is finished, remove the paper from the clipboard and place it in a file for later reference.

The clipboard is scalable (a word folks like to use these days). When there are many items in the air, the pile of paper is larger. The pile is smaller when there are fewer items of urgency. There are always more pencils available as well as blank pieces of paper.

The clipboard is portable. No matter the location, the clipboard is at hand. No power? No problem. No battery? No problem. No WiFi? Same answer. Many questions, and they all have the same answer.

Of course people think it odd to be walking about with a clipboard of papers and a pencil (if possible, carry the pencil behind an ear for affect). People will not think it odd for a person to have answers for every little thing that occurs.

Try it. It has worked and will continue to work.

by Dwayne Phillips

These inconvenient facts seem to be everywhere. They are inconvenient, however, only when we have a story to tell that denies reality.

There are some old sayings like, “opinions being mugged by facts,” and “don’t confuse my opinion with facts,” and “there is nothing like facts getting in the way of my opinion,” and such silly things.

Years ago, a famous politician made a non-fiction movie in which computer-generated fictional scenes were presented as non-fiction actual scenes of nature. After awards were presented, the facts came to the surface. There was this famous newspaper that won a major award with a non-fiction story. Later, however, the facts surfaced that it was all made up, i.e., the inconvenient facts came to light. One major newsroom showed a factual government document that was several decades old. It took about an hour for the facts to show that the old government document used brand new fonts that didn’t agree with the date on the document. Ouch. Why?

Much closer to home, I recently attended a user engagement meeting that was hailed as a great success. The inconvenient facts, however, were that zero users attended the meeting. The user engagement engaged no users because the users were not engaged in the product one little bit. Ouch. The facts didn’t meet the story that was told.

We can all do better. Let’s have our facts and state them in our story. Facts are inconvenient only when we ignore them and someone else brings them to light afterwards. It doesn’t have to be that way. Otherwise, facts are facts. Write a story that agrees with the facts.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is one of the fundamental questions that persons working projects need to answer. We know what we are attempting, but we don’t know the actual progress and how that compares to the expected progress.

There are several fundamental questions that should be asked and answered by people working on projects. Among those are:

• Whatcha’ doin’?
• When’ll ya’be’done?

The question for this blog post is how’sit goin’? That is short for, “How is it going? How is the task proceeding? How does the actual work compare to the expected work?”

We ask this question of persons who have an assigned task in a project. We have some expectation of the work involved. We need to know how large an error we had in “some expectation.” The actual work is always different from the expected work. What is the delta?

Several things here for everyone attempting to accomplish work:

Be ready to answer clearly. Answers such as, “Okay. You know, shrug,” are insufficient. Everyone, including the person attempting to accomplish work, needs to have a brief and clear answer.

Don’t be defensive. Everyone asks this question of everyone else everyday. No one is being highlighted for special treatment either good or bad. We seek information about the task, not the person. We seek to improve the management of the work, not review a person’s abilities.

As managers of work, clearly state these to the persons performing the work. Those persons will be better able to answer, and your job will become much easier.

by Dwayne Phillips

Though we hate to admit it, the goal of us who work in computing is to produce a TPS report.

The “TPS Report” is the butt of all office jokes. It is meaningless paperwork that serves no purpose. For a full explanation, see the Wikipedia page on it. Those of us who work in computing have important things to do. We are saving the world or at least a part of the world that we deem important. Right? Huh? Please?

We do software development, software engineering, data, big data, even bigger data, science about all that really big-big-big data, and other such wonderfulness.

Sorry fellow computing-ers. Our job is to make it easy for others to do TPS reports and other such things. Sorry. We work in a business or in a government. If we do not add to the profits of the business or the mission of the government, we do not work.

One of the primary tasks in a business and in a government is to inform others. People inform others with reports. We may call them pages, portals, or (one of my favorites) “dynamic content,” but they are all forms of reports. If we can make it easier for others to inform others, we work and are paid. Otherwise, we are just doing things that interest us. Interesting things are interesting, but usually don’t provide food, clothing, and shelter to ourselves and our families.

Want a job? Want to keep a job? Discover what others are doing to inform others. Use computing to make that easier.

by Dwayne Phillips

Measuring small things is much more difficult than measuring large things. We do it anyways and report the results with great confidence. Woe is us.

It is more difficult to measure small things that it is to measure large things. Consider measuring the diameter of a sphere. We can use a device that is accurate to 1/10th of an inch. If the diameter of the sphere is 1 inch, we are off by 10%. If the diameter of the sphere is 100 inches, we are off by 0.1%. Hmm, measuring the smaller sphere is much more difficult.

This difficulty of small things extends to events in everyday life. Consider a drug test on ten persons. If each person is healthy, the drug is 100% effective. If one sickly person joins the group and the drug fails, now it is only about 90% effective—wow, that was a big jump. If we test the drugs on 1,000 persons and a few sickly persons join, the drug drops from 100% effective to something like 99% effective. Hmmm, a few this and that doesn’t make a big difference.

Now we consider America. We have a population of about 330 million. If we perform a study that involves 3 million of us, that is a 1% study. That is a small number and we are back to the difficulty of measuring small things. If something happens with 30,000 of us, let’s see, that is 0.01% of us. Whoa, that is a tiny group. Now we are trying to measure tiny things. That is really difficult.

If something happens to 30,000 of us, that seems like a big number, but is only a tiny number. It seems unfair, but no legitimate news organization would report something that happens to 0.01% of us.

I must be naive. The news media reports everything that happens to 0.01% of us and everything that happens to tinier groups than that. Yes, I must be naive.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is the third or fourth time I wish us all a happy birthday.

Happy birthday America.

We are free to address our grievances to those who govern us. That one happens so often and freely that we forget someone had to put it in the Constitution. Congress cannot stop us from complaining. If we could jail anyone who complains, well you know how that wouldn’t work out well.

We still struggle with the freedom from search and seizure. At least there is something on paper that allows us to push back.

There is this right to due process. We do pretty well with that one. It keeps down the urge to “string ’em up right now.”

And we sure are glad that if we do something here, we won’t be tried by folks over there. Folks over there are nice folks, but they don’t live here and don’t understand here very well. And, by the way, folks here don’t understand there very well, either.

If we don’t like a judge, we can have a jury instead.

Then comes the tenth amendment. We haven’t figure that one out, yet. We are trying.

All in all, a pretty nice place to have a birthday.

by Dwayne Phillips

Information is power. It can be good as well.

I keep a steno spiral notebook on my workspace. I jot the date for today and everything I do today. I have done this since sometime in 1986. That is … a bunch of years. I have all the notebooks, so if you want to know what I did in September of 1999, you should talk to someone about that desire. It may not be healthy, but I can tell you what I did that month.

Recently I read a writer call this a “work diary.” I guess that is a good name. I just call it a notebook, and on second thought “work diary” might be better.

Anyways, the writer finished the post with, “this is data and data is power.”

I call it information. I suppose “information is power.” I don’t like the “power” part, but I guess it fits. I find that the notebook on the workspace has saved me many troubles over many years. I could type these notes on the computer, but I’ve used many different computers over the years. I have no idea what kind of computer and software I used in 1987, but I am pretty sure that I would have lost those notes due to something not being compatible with something else.

These steno notebooks are “backwards compatible” and “forwards compatible” with whatever I am doing now. Yes, “you can’t grep trees” is still true (that means you can’t use a computer to search all the notebooks). Still, this all works pretty well.

The little notebook that you use everyday and keep forever is one of the few practices that I recommend to everyone.

Yes, that Sheldon character on the Big Bang Theory uses the black and white Composition Notebooks for everything and keeps them all. Same idea.