Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We are talking about this because this is what we are talking about now.

The preacher—the person on TED talks, the motivational speaker, the person next to you at the bar— preaches on the topics that we talk about in the parking lot, the hall ways, the grocery store, etc.

At work, we build the systems that people at work talk about in their fondest dreams.

They don’t stand up and shout, “I WANT THIS! I REQUIRE THIS!”

but they talk about it.

LISTEN.

by Dwayne Phillips

The clipboard and the pencil are perhaps the simplest yet effective tools for doing something important: recording history. And if we don’t have our history, we will repeat work and waste resources.

I was in high school—a long time ago in a place far, far away. It was the train station (no longer used) in Amite, Louisiana. Our high school was using the building to host a fund raiser.

As I was want to do, I wandered away from the organized activities to seek out something more interesting. I found papers on a dusty shelf from 1941 (sort of a famous year in American history). Someone with a clipboard and a pencil had written on them. This was history.

History is important. It is important to society as we have that saying about being doomed to repeat mistakes or something.

History is important to an organization attempting any endeavor worth attempting. If we don’t know what we did yesterday, we are apt to do it again today and waste lots of resources. How many of us have resources to waste?

I once saw a group of really smart people spend $20million building a database system to record the comings and goings of magnetic tapes from a storeroom. No kidding—these were really smart people. No kidding—they spent $20million of 1990 money. (Is that $30million or $40million today?)

All we needed to do back then was put a person at the door with a clipboard and a pencil. Take a tape out of the storeroom? Your name is recorded along with the tape you took. Bring the tape back? Your name is checked off the list. Don’t bring the tape back? We find you and the tape.

Of course this is a silly and trite example. Such examples of waste, however, often seem silly and trite.

Still, a person with a clipboard and a pencil can do an important and resource-saving task: record history.

Consider the cost and the savings.

by Dwayne Phillips

Adding to something can be difficult. The result is often less beautiful, less structurally pure, less this and that. Behold, however, the beauty of the “add on.”

You see them in houses. At least we used to see them. We still do in some rural areas where construction isn’t regulated too much.

A family grew (babies). Income grew. They added a bedroom. Then they added another. And then another.

A restaurant had more business. They added a dining room onto the left side of the building.

Software use grew. We added a few new features that the new users wanted.

Ugly? Maybe. Not fitting perfectly with the original architecture? Probably.

Beautiful? Absolutely. Someone succeeded. Someone grew. Someone added on.

by Dwayne Phillips

When will the curve bend? When should I change? Will I be willing to change?

There are curves we can draw that show cost, performance, and lots of things. Take note of them. Take note of the bend in the curve…

• when USB thumb drive air gap is faster than a network
• when we pay more for lawyers than programmers
• when health care costs exceed health care insurance premiums
• when weight gain exceeds time exercising
• when something really important in my life changes

A bend in a curve means the way I did something is no longer the way I should do something. A bend in a curve means I should change.

Should does not always equal do. I can decide if I change. If I refuse to change, perhaps I should ask why I drew the curve in the first place. Why did I collect the data and plot it?

Things change with time whether I like the changes or not. If it weren’t for change, life would be awfully boring.

by Dwayne Phillips

Present and past weave together. New tools or old techniques?

I am a bit slow on the uptake of “new” things from time to time. This past week or so I stumbled across this thing called Jupyter. It is a type of “notebook.” Some call it yet another implementation of the “notebook” paradigm. It allows the analyst to weave descriptions of work with short pieces of computer programs. Hmmm. I like this.

Lest we forget…and old people are want to forget at times and remember at others…I seem to recall…

Literate programming: Donald Knuth invented this a few generations ago. (It seems that anything of value invented in the past 50 years came from Knuth, Dijkstra, or Weinberg.) Literate programming combined descriptions of what a person was thinking in English with descriptions of what the computer should do in computer-understandable language, i.e., source code.

Literate programming didn’t catch on nearly as much as I felt it should have. I think the trouble with literate programming and these analyst notebooks is that the person is thinking, understands their thinking, wants to communicate their thinking, and can communicate their thinking.

That is a lot to ask of folks these days. That is a lot to ask of folks any days.

Still, I consider the concept worth exploring and introducing to colleagues.

by Dwayne Phillips

It is an old concept, the secretary or admin assistant, but are we misusing our resources?

I remember when there where persons in the workplace called “secretaries.” I remember when we stopped using that title and started using “administrative assistant” instead.

I find it unfortunate that we often have other persons now performing these jobs.

Do you tell an engineer or computer scientist to:

• manage budgets
• keep spreadsheets
• attend telephone calls
• handle visitors
• maintain websites
• arrange travel
• prepare expense reports
• take notes in meetings
• arrange meetings
• proof read documents

ooops, Wikipedia lists these as duties performed by secretaries. So, how are we managing our resources?

Perhaps we should hire a secretary. A person trained and skilled at these things. Expertise still has a place.

by Dwayne Phillips

Would anyone mind if we simply did this correctly?

There are some fields of endeavor where the problem has been solved. The solution is known and many have employed the solution successfully many times. I know we don’t usually do this type of thing here, but would anyone mind if we did?

I find it unfortunate in that there are many fields of endeavor and many persons who do mind if we simply did something correctly. There are many explanations for such seemingly irrational behavior. There is some merit in some of the explanations like, “Let’s try something different as we may learn something here.” I like that explanation as it has a goal: learning.

Many of the other explanations for not simply doing something correctly lean towards the ego. “I am in charge here, now. We will do it my way.”

Such “simply do it correctly” examples range from computer programming to peeling potatoes.

Again, please refer to the beginning. There are some fields of endeavor where the problem has been solved. Apply appropriately.

by Dwayne Phillips

Let’s analyze the best value of an old tool and a new one.

Consider a tool in frequent use today: the smartphone. It can access the world. I can access my personal and professional databases. I can control anything in the world wide networks that I connect to just about any device. Cost: $1,000.

Consider an old tool: a clipboard and a pencil. Cost: let’s be extravagant and say $10. It allows for information storage and retrieval. Not everything in the world, but everything I need to accomplish my task now.

Let’s consider other things like information compatibility. If it is recorded somewhere and somehow, the clipboard has it. What I recorded 30 years ago, I can have on my clipboard. Various digital formats have disappeared (I have lots of information still on 5 1/4″ floppy disks, but cannot access that). Various paper forms are, well, they are paper and they are still paper and I can put any paper on my clipboard. The papers I wrote 30 and 40 years ago are usable on the clipboard. (Yes, I am that old and yes, I wrote things that long ago that are still useful.)

I can scan and digitize just about any paper and put it on the smartphone. That is quite useful. I can also print just about any digital information and put it on my clipboard. Of course I need judgement there as my clipboard won’t hold EVERYTHING I can print. Ah, judgement. Hmmm, that is another thing I could use more often.

We could go on with the usefulness question, but the next question makes much of that a mute point.

Now we move to the question of value. We have to create some idea of the usefulness of the tool divided by its cost. The clipboard costs 1% as much as the smartphone. Does it deliver more than 1% of the usefulness? 1% isn’t much. I’m afraid that the clipboard easily delivers more than a mere 1% of usefulness.

Oh well. There we have it. The clipboard wins the best-value analysis. Perhaps we can perform some other type of analysis.

by Dwayne Phillips

Schools are for learning. Or are schools for teaching? The two are different.

If learning is the goal, this school district succeeded. “High school students crash the WiFi system so the teachers cannot access homework assignments.”

The kids at that high school learned a lot. They learned computing; they learned computer security; they learned the psychology of design; they learned…we could go on.

Perhaps what they learned is not what the adults in the school district were attempting to teach. Ah, there is a difference in what the adults were teaching and what the kids were learning.

Let us recognize that the adults—whether by accident (probably) or design (probably not)—provided the motivation for learning. They created a situation in which the kids wanted to learn computer security and all those other things. Let us give them credit for that.

Now, if they (the adults, not the kids) can take this lesson and apply their own learnings to all the other things…

by Dwayne Phillips

Yes, the technology is here to watch everyone all the time, but do those who have it also have the ability to use it?

Each day I see yet another example of the reach of technology. Facial recognition seems to be the most recent target of the they-are-watching-us crowd. Little cameras are everywhere. Big databases are present—think of all those driver’s license photos. Put one and one together and there we have it.

Yes, we do have the technology. Let’s consider if anyone is able to put one and one together.

A few years ago I worked in a leading-edge technology shop in government. We had it. Yet we couldn’t keep track of the five of us in the office so that we knew if a person would be in the office or on the other coast on any given day. Calendars, especially those new-fangled Microsoft Calendar things in Outlook, were beyond our personal ability to master.

Therefore, when we see how “they” are watching us, we should ask, “Are they smart enough to watch us?” And consider that “they” work for the government. (At least now “they” do as the government is still the only organization that can put me in jail.)

In government, technical competence is not the most important factor to who is put in position to decide what to do. (See the writings of many on this topic if you don’t believe me.) There are government employees who are tenacious, hard-working, and don’t quit when pursuing persons intent on evil. Those persons are usually at the “working level,” not the “deciding level.” If you an evil doer, fear them. If you are just like the rest of us, no worries.

Their superiors are still struggling with that Calendar thing in Outlook and how to schedule a conference room and three other people.