Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

This paraphrase from Through the Looking Class continues to reign in systems development.

The title of this post is a famous paraphrase from the classic Through the Looking Glass. I live it most days. The conversation goes something like this:

Me: The system won’t do such-and-such.

Builder: Of course not. It wasn’t supposed to do that.

This is simple. There was no prior commitment to what the system was supposed to do. Hence, any result will do just as any destination for Alice would do.

We have been able to hide behind the-latest-buzzword-in-development. We tried “something.” What we have, by default, it what someone intended at some time.

I am afraid that what we are telling ourselves is:

We don’t care enough about the other persons to commit anything to them in writing or over a handshake or any type of commitment.

Perhaps I am now too old for system building. I was raised in a time and place (far, far from here) where and when we told the other person what we were going to do and then we worked as hard as we needed to deliver that. The other person meant something to us. Disappointing the other person was the worst thing that could happen.

Today’s system builders are good, smart, caring people. They have the best of intentions and they work hard. Still, we seem to be relying on Alice a bit too much.

by Dwayne Phillips

A speaker can lead an accepting or friendly audience just about anywhere. Hostile audiences, however, can uncover holes in thought. I recommend the questioning group—especially when the stakes are high.

It was a senior-level course in Electrical Engineering. The teacher, I can’t recall his name, but I do remember that he didn’t have a PhD, just a Master’s and several decades of experience, walked us through the solution to a quirky design problem for 45 minutes. We had it. We knew what to do.

Then he pulled it on us. He showed us how all that stuff he just told us was wrong and would never work.

The Lesson: If you are a friendly audience, i.e., you are not skeptical and you don’t ask any questions, the speaker can lead you through all sorts of nonsense.

The Hostile Audience: the attitude is, “I doubt you, whatever it is you are about to say, so convince me.” Note: the hostile audience holds no personal animosity. It does, however, hold healthy skepticism and asks lots of questions. Sometimes we need the sharp questions, the uncomfortable poke with a stick.

The Friendly Audience: like the classroom full of seniors I was in. We were in awe of the speaker and had no inclination to question anything. There are occasions when a friendly audience is better for all of us. There aren’t many of these situations when we work with adults. They sort of dry up once we become teenagers.

by Dwayne Phillips

Basing decisions on a person’s age is a bad practice and always has been.

Individual persons are  just that—individual persons. Groups have tendencies. Oh the horror of that statement, but it has some truth behind it. One of the greater follies of this post (post(post)) modern era is that of the “digital native.” Now proven to be false (see this study), don’t expect someone to be a whiz at technology based on their birth certificate.

The knowledge of mankind is at our fingertips. This was predicted several decades ago and it true. Ever sat in a room of college students and asked a fact-based question? The answer doesn’t pop back as fast it would seem. They don’t know how to turn questions into queries and return answers. Forget all that stuff in the newspapers. It doesn’t work that way.

Some persons in their 50s, i.e., born in the last millennium, can do that. We learned logic and rational thought. We also learned how to learn. (Amazing stuff that meta-learning!)

And forget the stuff about younger minds being quicker. Quicker minds are quicker than slower minds. Of course that is the definition, but it holds true.

All this makes a manager’s job tougher. Well, it makes a manager’s job a manager’s job. Knowing the persons who work with you and what they can do is just about as fundamental as anything in a manager’s job.

Darn. It sure would be easier if we could just look at the birth certificate and make lots of assumptions.

by Dwayne Phillips

A little future prediction about what we used to call automobiles.

When the self-driving car actually arrives. We will no longer have:

Rear-view mirrors – we’ll have lots of sensors “looking” in all directions.

Steering wheel – what would we do with that?

Front-facing seats – car interiors will be rectangles that we arrange and decorate as we wish. What about safety? Self-driving cars don’t have accidents.

Windows – I guess we will have some kind of windows, but we will decide where they are, how big they are, and so on. Again, the car will have lots of sensors “looking” out for us.

Trunk – why put things in a compartment that we cannot reach?

Four doors – ooops, we already lost that one.

Some cosmetics – really, it will be a personal bus, so how good does that have to look? Besides, a big box gives us more space inside.

Anything else?

by Dwayne Phillips

Want to see knowledge management in action? Go to, of all places, the library.

No, we won’t go to the library to find a book all about knowledge management. We will go to the library to see knowledge management in real life.

Look about. We are surrounded by reusable modules of knowledge Grab one. Grab another. Put them back in place.

Want to find one of those modules of reusable knowledge? They are searchable. These new libraries have computers to help us find the modules. Older libraries, I think some of these exist, have these cabinets full of little cards that tell us where the modules of reusable knowledge are.

Silly?

I don’t think so. The library is the best, easiest to find and visit example of knowledge management I can find. Trying to convince someone that your organization’s knowledge costs money and should be saved, searchable, and reusable? Take them to the library. Try to imagine the library without being able to find any book. Not pretty. It is a shame that most of our organizations are not pretty in this way.

by Dwayne Phillips

It has reached the point where I don’t even ask anymore. Working systems is so much important than documentation, that…well, you know.

Situation: Someone has a horrible problem. Someone else has asked them to do something that they simply cannot do. Someone asks me to look at this.

Me: Please show me…any one of the fundamental pieces of documentation that you know you should have to manage a system.

The Bearer of the Impossible Task: Uh, we don’t have that.

Me: Hmm, I think we both know the root of the problem.

The Bearer of the Impossible Task: But you have to understand.

Me: No, I don’t have to understand neglect.

The Bearer of the Impossible Task: But we have lots of problems here.

Me: I can see that, and so can you. Now, what are you going to do?

Consider:

Do you have someone who can disassemble your system, move it to a new location, reassemble it and have it work the first time? If not, you should have something that explains how to do that.

Do you have someone who can show you how every part of your system was tested and how it performed “good enough?” If not, you should have something that explains that.

Do you, not someone on your team, but you, know everyone external to your system who can turn it off? If not, you should…well, no use continuing.

by Dwayne Phillips

Once again, our new “technology” brings us back to where we started a few decades ago.

Recently…

I walk into Starbucks.

And there is a long line.

So I sit in my usual spot and start my Internet work.

I order my coffee and bagel on my phone.

Five minutes into work I walk over and pick up my order.

I have turned a stand-and-order restaurant into a sit-and-order restaurant.

Hmmm, all this technology takes me back to the 1960s or something. We sat in restaurants, ordered, and did something until the food arrived.

Stand-and-order is okay sometimes. Sit-and-order is okay some times.

Well, there is some value in choice, I guess.

Still, it seems this mobile app order was intended to do something new or whatever.

by Dwayne Phillips

Why is it that people ask questions when they don’t want to hear the answers?

Let’s go in reverse order here.

Result: Dead silence.

My Answer: I want to work with good, smart people on difficult problems whose solution enhances national security.

Recruiter’s Question: What is it you like to do?

What has happened here? Just another case of, “I’m going to ask you a question, but I really don’t want you to answer it.”

This happens too often for me. I suppose I have this defect where I feel that if you ask me a question, you want an answer to it. I guess for the good of all mankind, my defect is rare. Mankind seems to function alright with this “hear my question, but don’t answer it” situation.

I guess this is a function of most people being uncomfortable with silence. Words must be flowing. I don’t know why they must be flowing, but again, I have this inherent but rare defect.

Here’s a suggestion: Say what you really feel. “I am uncomfortable with silence between the two of us. Please, talk to me a while. Anything will do. Anything.”

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes people decide simply on what washes in and out with the tide. It works sometimes, but I don’t recommend it.

The tide comes in. It carries things, deposits them on the beach, and it goes out.

The tide comes in. It picks up what is on the beach, and carries it out to sea.

We walk on the beach. Oh, look what came in with the tide. This could be interesting. Let’s do something with this thing carried in by the tide.

In my decades of work with technical systems and the persons who work on those systems, I have seen the tides come in and out, in and out. I have seen the decision makers base their decisions on the tide.

Look at what the tide carried in. Maybe, oh, wait, I’m busy with a vacation or something. When I come back, something else is on the beach carried in by the tide. Oh, I have some time on my hands. Let’s do something with this tide-transported thingy. Here we go.

The tide decision process works sometimes. Its randomness helps us maintain a status quo. Perhaps half the things carried by the tide are good, half are bad, so we end up about where we started. This is especially good in government where moving from the status quo is usually considered bad.

Want to do something better? Avoid the tides. Think. Use your brain. Notice the tide as sometimes better just washes in. That, however, is rare.

Choose, instead.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some of our system’s users will work and work to make the system perform for them. Others, however, will dump it at the first sign of frustration.

We have a system. We think it is “good enough.” It can do things for a group of people that nothing else can do. It is worth their while to learn how to use it as the time it while save them is an order of magnitude greater than the time required to learn it, i.e., the return on investment is very high.

Will they learn it and use it?

Some will. They will work and work and use it. When the system bumps and trips—like all “good enough” systems will do now and then—they continue to work with it and move around the trips. It is worth the effort.

Others won’t. “Piece of junk.” They move on to something else or go back to the way they’ve always done their job before.

We want efforting users, i.e., those who will expend the effort required. They eventually forget the frustrating hours where they expended effort. They market the system for us among their peers.

How do we find those efforting users? We have to be like them. We have to expend the effort required to find them. We can’t just build a wonderful, albeit good enough, system and wait for the world to discover our masterpiece. We have to push away from our computer and, uh oh, here it comes, go to their place and talk to them face to face.

We have to be like the people we want to find. Couldn’t this be easier?