Do not accept answers that you do not understand.

Not only it is the duty of the purse string holders needing to know precisely, without being clouded by technical jargon, what a software solution can do for the enterprise, every users need to know. This ensure that the buyers and users know precisely what they are getting and what they are paying for.

It is refreshing to come across this article in Financial Times relaying the experience of a very wise and persistent director of an enterprise that "demanded the computing experts translate their plans into plain English."

Far too often, as I have observed, that the recipients of software products choose to keep quiet for fear of showing up their ignorance or failure to comprehend of the materials from the so-called "technical experts". They all should emulate this "Dennis".

In fact, it is the communication fault of the "technical experts" that fail to explain the materials, particularly the functional part, in the terms that the users can understand. I don't expect them to explain how data base schemas are designed, XML messages being passed around or how to pool connections but at least they should be able to answer user-centric questions like what is the response time of say 20,000 users accessing the system, the stability of the system in terms of how often one expects a failure.

In a theme similar to the "Why Software Sucks" but at a different level, the  messages from the FT article are worth remembering. Admitting one does not understand the gobbledegook, often silently, and then not demanding answers to one's satisfaction is an abdication of one's duty.

Investing in failure to create success

A recently published article of this title contains some uncomfortable truths to many so called IT companies:

Given IT innovation is trial and error, how much should you invest in allowing for errors?

The short answer is a lot. Some IT companies are risking up to 75 per cent of their R&D budget for a winning result.

Others have invested years in seemingly losing ideas that eventually transformed into a winning one.

[...]
“A lot of companies will try a product, fail and think it's too hard and crawl back in their box. Australia is quite conservative,” Gardiner says.

However, to compete in a global market companies must take risks.

“(US companies) are risk-takers and to compete with them we have to be too.”

[...]
He believes managers today are too focused on immediate results and are reluctant to spend on developing products that will only pay off years down the track. Some will milk proven products in lieu of trying new ones, despite pouring money into research.

At the end sound advice:

His advice for companies unsure of investing in new ideas includes:
- Decide what game you are in, then play to win
- Invest in the development team and keep learning so you can discover how you can adapt
- Have lots of tenacity, patience and perseverance. A solution that is very hard to conquer is also very hard to copy, giving its owner an immediate advantage.

Difference between expert programmer and novice

Very succinctly put:

An expert can tell a non-expert to check for such conditions, and with those specifications, the non-expert can probably code them, but only the expert anticipates them. Just like driving, what makes a good programmer is not only the ability to solve the problems that occur, but the ability to foresee (and avoid) problems that haven't occurred yet. Unfortunately, experts learn how to do that by making mistakes. It's a sad commentary on the human condition. Each generation acquires expertise primarily by repeating the mistakes of the past generations. To paraphrase Neils Bohr, "An expert is someone who has made all the possible mistakes in a very narrow field."

But when you're riding in a car with a novice driver, you'll probably appreciate P. J. Plauger's version more, "My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared."

Comments:
Unfortunately, many novice developers or ones that have just acquired a taste of a new technology immediately delude into writing something only an expert is capable. It does not matter if it is just to store data in a file as illustrated by the example used. Or using COM, C++ framework such as ATL/STL, .Net or Java.

Many development managers lacking the experience and expertise fail to distinguish between act of stupidity and stroke of an expert, thus concur blindly allowing novice to use their product as the training ground, often leading to failure to exploit opportunities and creating laughable products.

Often these managers confuse the expert's time and effort to "foresee (and avoid) problems that haven't occurred yet" as being a case of gold plating and then wondering why they are having recurring problems, lack of respect and trust from their customers, and complaints.

Toxic bosses

According to Human Synergistics' report, toxic boss

encouraged staff to ''fit the mould'' at the cost of new ideas.

''This compliance approach to management crushes any spark of creativity or innovation,'' he said.

''Quite frankly, to encourage conformity in the current climate is business suicide.''

Sounds familiar indeed. How to recognise a toxic management or manager? Here are some of the signs

Moody, aggressive, unpredictable, incompetent, always blaming other people. A compulsive liar with a Jekyll and Hyde nature, the individual, male or female, is always charming and plausible when management are around.

Toxic bosses and toxic managers prevent staff doing their jobs and prevent employees fulfilling their duties. They thrive in a toxic work environment. Unpredictable moods, conflicting demands, inconsistent orders, random decision-making, inability to plan strategically, inability and unwillingness to communicate and co-operate, obstructive ... the list goes on. If management suddenly appoint a toxic boss as your manager, you'll realise that toxic shock syndrome is not just a female condition. If you've got a toxic manager, your problems have just begun. And they won't get better.

Spot on and very true observation.

Bosses return to 1950s management style

This management style produces:

"We have too many workplaces which are toxic, by toxic I mean people aren't valued.

"Every organisation says 'people are our greatest asset' - my immediate response to that is then why do most organisations treat their employees like liabilities?"

I did not think it was a 'return to 1950s management style' as it seemed to be the modus operandi of the company I once worked for even before the Global Financial Crisis as it exhibits this trait:

They're also micromanaging and bossing their staff around, rather than engaging with them, she says.

"It sends a signal to employees that 'I don't trust you can do the job without being closely supervised', it equates not seeking input from anybody below senior executive level," she says.

Why would some company want to project having a blurred vision?

I have seen companies wanting to project themselves as having clear vision but have not heard of one wanting to advertise itself as having a blurred vision until I was shown the one.

See for yourself. Below is a company's propaganda poster, doctored to hide the company name & logo saving it from embarrassment. I was told it was plastered all over the hallway prominently.

Perhaps, there is some truth in that poster!

Commercial software subjected to public scrutiny

Bruce Schneier reports a court case in which the accuracy or quality of the embedded software in an alcohol breathalyzer is being questioned in a court case and the court decides to subject the software in question to an independent proper assessment, i.e. a proper code review, despite protests naturally from the vendor.

For people interested in seeing a professionally compiled thorough code review can read the full report and a separate deeper analysis report. Both reports are very educational, particularly the second one.

When I am digging through this report, which I do not recommend people to print out the full 57 pages, it reminds me of the similarity in the quality (or lack of) in an Australian-made ERP software. To be honest, the ERP software is far worse by a large margin.

For example, it is not uncommon in the Australian-made ERP software to have far higher density of code exceeding the CC of 105, admittedly, though inexcusably, the ERP software has more LOC. I have personally seen CC higher than 150-200 after discounting the accuracy of the metric measuring tool.

Another issue identified by this review that is wide spread in this Australian-made ERP software is the frivolous and gratuitous use of global variables; this was caused by lack of training in good software practices, lack of reviews and aided by the development tool. In fact so wide spread that it was used as an excuse to avoid an architectural design correction exercise. In the company's view, it is much cheaper to let their poor users to foot the bill of their frivolous resources wastage, the result of its architectural flaws and ignorance, by paying much higher hardware costs.

Public review of commercial and proprietary software should be a normal public quality assurance process to safe-guard the welling being of the software consumers; it is similar to safety rating of cars or electrical appliances. Such public review would have unearthed the glaring mistakes committed by this Australian-made ERP system allowing the users to seek compensation.

Currently, the playing field is severely tilled towards the producers, as reported, allowing them to discharge all responsibilities and to take all rewards.

Companies have often invoked the commercial-in-confidence or proprietary IP excuses to escape such scrutiny. But this report stated in court that

Base One found that the code consists mostly of general algorithms arranged in a manner to implement the breath testing sequence. "That is, the code is not really unique or proprietary."

I doubt there are too many genuinely proprietary IP stuff in many today's commercial software. The more well established they are, the less they are and many are just a quilt of widely publicised algorithms poorly implemented to meet the so-called commercial dead lines.

In my opinion as a developers with over 20 years of experience, I believe those hiding being the veil of proprietary secrecy are too afraid to be caught using unsafe practices, not using industry best practices and ignorance of their mistakes in their own coding; the Alcotest did not even realise that they have committed buffer overruns and including others surprises in the published findings.

The review report attempts to nail down the reasons for the high CC has this to say:

source code appears to have evolved over numerous transitions and versioning, which is responsible for cyclomatic complexity.

While this is a likely cause, and is in agreement with my experience in the Australian-made ERP software, it only indicates both companies have a very poor software maintenance process. Most likely it is based on code-and-fix with little regards to refactoring during a bug fix phase.

The review findings and my own personal experience in this industry indicate that bad software practices are more universal with no geographical boundaries.

Showcasing the genuine ones in financial hard time

Justin Brown decided to showcase those companies that stand by their staff in financial hard time by creating a web site. Well done.

"At the moment the world is all doom and gloom, recession, credit crunching and downsizing. This site gives you a chance to gloat that your business has not fallen victim to short-sightedness, that even through bad times you value your staff enough to keep them for when times are good."

Most companies only give lip-service when they tout that they value staff as assets but tough times sort out the sheep from the goats causing them to reveal their true selves.

Mincom, Pacific Brands and Vision Australia need not apply.

Is it a second coming for Apple?

Recently Apple announced that it is building up its capability to build its own chip. Is its Apple's second coming or another case of Deja Vue.

Jim Carlton in his book has documented Apple's first foolish attempt between 1986 and 1989 that ended up flushing down the drain $20 million as follows:

...an Advanced Technology Group engineer named Sam Holland, who in 1986 convinced Gassee that Apple should design its own microprocessor chips.
[...]
Believing that Gassee and the engineers knew best, Sculley gave Aquarius his unequivocal support, to the extend that he even bought the engineers a $15 million Cray supercomputer they could use to perform their design work on.
[...]
The underlying motivation behind the Aquarius project was Apple's fear that the Motorola line of microprocessors that it was dependent on would soon run out of steam and be surpassed by the rival line from Intel.
[...]
Holland proposed that Apple design not only a new chip but one that would incorporate four microprocessors onto a single piece of silicon.
[...]
The only problem was that this had never been attempted before in a computer as small as a desktop.
[...]
"Aquarius was an example of the willingness of the top management of Apple to embark on grand projects that skilled technical management would have known was unfeasible," Alcorn [Al Alcorn was an Apple Fellow] says.

The italics emphasis is mine.

The project was shut down after a chip expert called Hugh Martin was recruited to help with the Aquarius project and this exchange between him and Sculley led to the cancellation of this bold & foolish attempt:

"He said, 'What do you think about Aquarius?", Martin recalls. "I said, John, that's ridiculous. Apple has no fab or chip experience. How do you compete with Intel and Motorola?"

Within 6 month after that conversation, the project was canceled.

Let's hope Apple management can still remember this secret project and learn from the history. Now Motorola is effectively out of the contention and Martin's question to Apple in 1989 was as appropriate to Apple as it is now, except that you can substitute Motorola with AMD.

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"Apple - the inside story of intrigue, egomania, and business blunders" by Jim Carlton, 1997, Time Business a division of Random House. Page 86-90

Open Office Plan leads to lower productivity

Recently an article cited some research concludes that:

"In 90 per cent of the research, the outcome of working in an open-plan office was seen as negative, with open-plan offices causing high levels of stress, conflict, high blood pressure, and a high staff turnover.

"The high level of noise causes employees to lose concentration, leading to low productivity, there are privacy issues because everyone can see what you are doing on the computer or hear what you are saying on the phone, and there is a feeling of insecurity.''

This is not a startling result because Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister had reported similar finding way back in the '80 and they concluded that:

Workers who reported before the exercise that their workplace was acceptably quiet were 0ne-third more likely to deliver zero-defect work.

Furthermore, Tom and Timonthy discovered, at that time,

The advocates of the new format produced not one shred of evidence that effectiveness would not impaired.

One digging around published data, they found the following justification for open plan office:

The fundamental areas of consideration in designing an open-plan office within an information processing environment are: the system's electrical distribution capabilities, computer support capabilities and manufacturer and dealer service.

In other words, open-plan was not designed for the benefit of human and is still is not even today!

---

"Peopleware - Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Edition" by Tom Demarco & Timonthy Lister, 1999, Dorset House Publishing Co. Inc. Part II, Chapter 9

The truth about office life - shallow and fake

Alain de Botton documented this artificial environment:

"A lot of these firms, in a downturn, having spoken about love and friendship and all that, don’t lose much sleep about getting rid of 20 per cent of the workforce," he points out.

"And that really fries your head, to be told ‘we love you, we love you’ and then to be got rid of."

Office life exists on a level of "shallow cheerfulness", and talking about a crisis of meaning or any other deep feeling is strictly frowned on.

A snapshot view of how Asia's best employers deal with economic down turns.

This is a snap shot analysis of how Asia's best employers deal with the economic down turns:

many of the best employers in Hewitt's survey see the global economic crisis as an opportunity to cement their relationship with their staff, train employees and woo key people from competitors.

According to the survey many are adopting the "Employee first, Customer Second" method:

Forward-looking companies across the region are adopting that business model. HCL Technologies, an IT outsourcing firm based in Noida, India, and a top 25 Hewitt winner, adopted a new vision statement called "Employee First, Customer Second" in 2006.

The idea: by empowering employees and giving them any tools they need to help customers, the business will thrive.

This is very same model used successfully by Southwest Airline, USA that came through 9/11 attacks financially intact with no layoff of any staff. This is how the former CEO James F. Parker explains it in his book, page 168:

At Southwest, we were sometimes asked who we sought to serve first - employees, customers or shareholders. We always said employees come first. We knew the way we treated our employees would determine their attitude towards our company. We knew that if we served our employees well, they would serve our customers well. And if our customers were happy, it was pretty likely the shareholders would be happy too.

That all pretty good sense to me sadly too many companies fail to see this simple rule.

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[1] "Do The Right Thing - how dedicated employees create loyal customers and large profits" by James F. Parker, Wharton School Publishing, 2008.