No Such Agency

Most people think the NSA is located in Ft. Meade, Maryland – and indeed, part of it is there. But according to rumors — and mind you, these are just rumors! — another NSA complex is located in San Antonio.

Of course, San Antonio is HOT – it actually broke global heat records in 2023 for the most continous days above 40C/100F. So as you can imagine, IF the rumors are true — and if the NSA were located in San Antonio — and I have no way of knowing if those rumors are true — and IF the NSA operated a huge datacenter — then it would be quite reasonable to expect a LOT of air conditioning.

Well, rumors aside, right next to a Walmart I spotted a HUGE field of massive air conditioning units – with no buildings in sight! So it does make one think: what exactly is being cooled, where, and for what reason?

When programs write programs for programs

The evolution of programming languages from the electromechanical 0GL to the advanced 5GL has fundamentally altered human-computer interaction. High-level languages and Low-Code/No-Code platforms have democratized programming, leading to the recent integration of AI tools which challenge traditional programming roles. But now, the confluence of AI with coding practices may not be merely a further incremental change but could represent the inception of a new paradigm in software development, a symbiosis of human creativity and computational efficiency.

The human/computer interaction

How humans program computers has only changed a handful of times in the last 130 years. The first tabulating machine was electromechanical. It was first introduced by Herman Hollerith’s company in 1890, and in fact these business machines put the BM in IBM. They could do limited digital processing on data provided to them via punched cards. An operator would program them with jumper wires and plugs on a pin board, telling the electricity where to flow and thereby which calculations to carry out. Let’s call this programming approach the Zeroth Generation Language, or 0GL.

The first large computers that followed borrowed Joseph Jacquard’s loom approach from 1803, using a defined instruction set encoded by ones and zeros; these were the First Generation Languages (1GL). Often they were implemented by giant roles of black tape with holes, a technology dating back to Basile Bouchon in 1725. The computing power was limited, but the only limit to the size of your application was how much tape your roles could hold.

The Second Generation (2GL) assembly languages increased human usability by replacing 0’s and 1’s with symbolic names. But in fact this was a small paradigm change, because these languages were just as tied to their hardware as were the wires in the tabulating machines 50 years before them.

The next great jump was FORTRAN (in 1957) and COBOL (in 1959). These languages were more human-readable than assembly, but that was not the key point. The key point was abstraction, achieved via machine-dependent compilers, so that one FORTRAN or COBOL application would presumably give the same answers on any machine on which it was run.

The transition to Fourth Generation Languages (4GL) was all about a leap in usability. Invented around 1970, SQL is the most notable example, using a human-like syntax: you tell it what you want, and it figures out how to get it. Despite its age it’s never been replaced and remains the gold standard for interacting with relational databases today.

Many computer scientists argue that the newest Low-Code/No-Code programming environments, such as Microsoft PowerApps, are the latest addition to the 4GL cadre since they similarly require little knowledge of traditional programming structures. This paradigm is exploding in popularity and transforming the enterprise IT landscape: business users (not IT professionals) create ephemeral applications to solve specific and often short-term business problems. But how ironic that with their GUIs and controls and connectors, they are the modern digital equivalents of the 0GL tabulating machine pin boards from 130 years ago!

Some people have argued there are now Fifth Generation Languages (5GL), used for artificial intelligence and machine learning, where the focus is on the results expected, not on how to achieve them.

From coding by hand to AI collaboration

The evolution of 0GL to 5GL is all about the leaps in how humans interact with machines. But not unsurprisingly, the advent of ChatGPT (and its cousins like Bard and GitHub Co-Pilot) has brought about a new paradigm in how we develop applications. As the new generation of college computer science students now well know, you don’t have to write your own Java/PHP/Python… code anymore; instead, you can ask ChatGPT to write it for you. Or for example, you can feed ChatGPT buggy code or code lacking in quality, and ask it to remedy the situation, or to create the tests and documentation. To be sure, there are limits, and a good human understanding of the language is essential to avoid errors and ensure you get the results you want. But the technology is advancing rapidly, its limits are contracting, and the degree of user-needed corrections shrinks every day.

If we project this situation forward – even just a bit – its ludicrousness becomes self-evident: humans asking AIs to create human-readable code for humans that no longer need to read the code! This paradox underscores a new era where the traditional roles of human programmers are not just assisted but fundamentally altered by artificial intelligence; it marks a significant evolution in computational development.

With Artificial intelligence now a key player in the realm of code creation, we need to examine its repercussions on this craft. This present state may be the start of a larger change, where artificial intelligence becomes a collaborative partner in code creation and the relationship between developer and programming tool is increasingly indistinct – in other words, a symbiosis of human creativity and computational power.

Does Constructive Alignment fall short? Part III

Continuing the series, now I want to summarize where Constructive Alignment as a didactical tool falls short – and how I would fix it.

I said it in my last blog. Whereas John Biggs did a great job of connecting learning outcomes with learning activities and learning assessments, a connection to the real world — to the WHY — is completely missing.

Fortunately, this seems very easy to fix, as shown here:

 

In other words, the real world goals — the WHY — feed into the learning outcomes.  In my next blog I’ll give a concrete example of how this could look in a real-world teaching situation.

 

Does Constructive Alignment fall short? Part II

Continuing the series, I want to show why I think Constructive Alignment falls short – and how I would fix it.

Always start with the WHY.

Maybe there are teachers who teach in order to teach. Fair enough. But as a scientific and engineering oriented guy, I’ve always thought teaching has a very applied aspect. In this context (and I admit it is not the only one!) students should be getting skills and abilities that they can use in real world situations.

So in this blog, let’s focus on an IT student that graduates from an IT program and joins the IT industry. Working in this IT industry will require knowledge that she has learned.  Probably there are existing maturity models that can classify this situation, but this one seems pretty reasonable to me:

Now if you jump back to my first blog about Constructive Alignment, perhaps you can see where my discomfort is beginning. Constructive Alignment seems to be a very practical tool; indeed, the whole “didactical” world seems to love it!  It clearly connects learning outcomes with learning activities and learning measurements.

But to my the most fundamental and important point of dissatisfaction: a connection between learning outcomes and real-world skills and abilities — in other words, the WHY for learning — is missing!

More on this in my next blog.

Does Constructive Alignment fall short? Part I

Let me start with a disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER: I spent more time in my life working with computers than any other topic – and I am no computer expect. I spent more formal time in my life studying physics – but I am no physics expert. So considering that I have only been dabbling in educational research (known as didactics – which sounds more scientific than I think it really is) for a few weeks, the reader is well-advised to take what follows with a massive 20-ton block of rocksalt!

OK, having appropriately disclaimed myself, in this blog I present a leading didactical idea called Constructive Alignment.  In my next blog I’ll talk about why I don’t like it – and how I would improve it.

Within educational circles — and please let’s park the discussion about how scientific these circles really are! — the idea is known as Constructive Alignment. It’s due to a fellow named John Biggs, who even has his own website. As a simple guide to preparing very effective teaching materials, he proposed linking the learning goals and the learning activities and the learning measurements. In his own words, “In constructive alignment, we start with the outcomes we intend students to learn and align teaching and assessment to those outcomes.

[ASIDE: If you have some time, surf to John’s website and you’ll be glad you did. He has a wonderful collection of essays and a general Asian perspective.]

I found this very pretty picture of Constructive Alignment here:

As far as I can tell from Mr. Google, whether it is scientifically justified or not (I’ve seen no experiments) this model seems to have found widespread application throughout the academic world.

In my next blog I’ll say why I don’t like it – and how I would change it.

Are slavery and the agile methodology topologically equivalent?

I was just writing a lesson about “computer drivers” and “database drivers” for my database class when the following idea occurred to me.  Not sure if everyone will agree.

A driver is like a slavedriver

It sounds a lot like slavery, and it is.  The driver does all the work. It does not ask any questions. It does not get paid. Most people don’t know it exists. And it only complains when it is asked to do something that it cannot.  Probably one day, if you are born again, then in a future life it is better to be born as a computer rather than a driver. Unless you really like being a slave.

Here’s a good picture of a slavedriver:

The Product Owner (also called PO in the agile world) is the guy in the background wearing a gold armband and indicating where he wants the big stone moved to.  He doesn’t care about the details: what kind of rock, how many slaves are needed, or how many ropes.  He just knows where he wants the big stone.

The slavedriver (called ScrumMaster in the agile world) is the big bald guy with the earring holding a whip. The slavedriver gets his very generic instructions from the Product Owner, then uses his detailed knowledge of the specifics (type of rock, how much friction, how many slaves, what kinds of rope, whether to use a lubrication such as water or sand, etc.) to “motivate” his team to do what the Product Owner wants. It’s all about motivation.

If the people are all suffering, we call this slavery. If the people are all having a good time, we call this the Agile Methodology. But both are the same.

A mathematician would say “slavery and the agile methodology are topologically equivalent to each other.” In the field of computer science or enterprise architecture, we use the term “separation of concerns.”  The Product Owner is concerned about getting the big stone to where he needs it; the slavedriver and slaves are concerned about the details to make that happen.

In short, the slavedriver makes the connection between the generic world (of the Product Owner) with the highly specific working world (of the slaves). The computer driver makes the connection between the generic world of the operating system, and the specific details of the hardware. And the database driver makes the connection between the generic world of the programming language, and the specific details of the specific database product.

Reflections of a Valley Guy — Part 7 “The Hollywood adventure continues”

A guest blog, by Chuck Ritley

I was riding high on heady fumes of stardom.  Then came another pinnacle opportunity. From 1965 through 1970, comic actor Don Adams starred in a James-Bond-send-up TV series named Get Smart.  He played an inept spy and the series had a big cult following.

Universal, to capitalize, decided to produce “The Return of Maxwell Smart”.    And they asked me for a full blown computer lab and would I come down and help the set designers plan it out?   My boss thought it was great, told me to take whatever I needed from inventory, and I left for Burbank with 4 field engineers and visions of getting my own Oscar.

Well, we cobbled up a lab, the studio prop guys added flashing lights, I wrote a bunch of nonsense programs, and the 4 FE’s sat around in case something burned out, and had their pictures taken with minor movie stars.  Oh, the glamour of Hollywood.  The movie plot line had Agent Smart use the computer to stop an evil genius from exploding a bomb that would leave everyone in the U.S. stark naked.

I knew this was the end of my Hollywood career, so I asked my boss:  “When the movie comes out at our local theater, why don’t we rent the whole theater for one night and take the whole company, their families and make a party out of it?”  (Ideas like this are the difference between me and Bill Gates.)  My boss thought it was great, and started negotiating.

But Hollywood dreams shatter. Just as the movie was ready for release, Universal changed the title.  Instead of “The Return of Maxwell Smart”, they named it “The Nude Bomb”. NOT a good follow-up to “E.T”.  The movie was a bomb, and the company wanted some distance.  No opening night theater party, no more movies for Chuck, only 3 confused lawyers trying to get our name removed from the credits.

 

Show biz!  There’s nothing like it.


This guest blog was submitted by Chuck Ritley, an adjunct professor of computer science with several major universities in the San Antonio area.  

Here are the links to the other blogs in this series:

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 1: “The Way It Was”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 2: “First Wave of Characters”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 3: “Evolution of the Geek”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 4: “When Giant Frys.com Sold Pork Chops”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 5: “Mr. Yee and the Albrae Street – Taiwan Connection”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 6: “Hollywood discovers the Valley”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 7: “The Hollywood adventures continue”

 

 

Thoughts on getting a (great) job in Europe

A friend asked me to provide some advice for a family member of his, now living in Asia, who wants to find a job in Europe and relocate here.

I can’t speak for all of the countries – and I can’t speak for all of the jobs – but I can give a few pieces of advice.  This advice is:

  • Tips and tricks that have helped me enormously.
  • Tips and tricks that are not very well known inside of Europe.
  • Tips and tricks that are probably unknown outside of Europe.

Here goes!

Get your own a website – and brand yourself!

People having their own websites were all the rage back in the late 1990’s (when they first appeared on the scene) throughout the early 2000’s, pretty much until MySpace (now dead) then Facebook took hold.  But this does not matter: a personal website is the most important tool you have for advertising yourself and “branding” yourself today!

If you are reading this now, then you know exactly what I am talking about.

Some principles now follow.

Website Principle 1: Content does not matter

Content does not matter, look-and-feel does matter.   The advantages are all sublimin

Website Principle 2: Professionality matters

This means use a professional tool (WordPress is the best and the easiest, full stop). And using a professional hosting site (I like Ionos because the customer service is incredible and the self-management tools are excellent). And using a very attractive template (this one uses the Radiate template – still one of the most popular templates in the WordPress world).

Website Principle 3: It is not the obvious, it is the subliminal

The power of the website is not the content you show, not the creativity you show, but rather the “behind-the-scenes” and subliminal message you are sending to everyone, imperceptibly: you are professional, you work with a top quality, and you do unusual things (like a website) that other people do not normally do.

Good Personal experiences

Before I got a website, any time I applied for a job, usually there was a 30% chance I’d speak with HR for a first interview. After my website, almost every job application results in a quick HR interview. Why?  Have a look at my landing page and I hope the reason is clear: wow, this looks like an interesting and usual fellow, let’s have a quick chat with him.

Bad personal experiences

I’ve shared this advice about branding and a personal website site 2015, and sadly, nobody has acted on it.  And yet many of the same people who have not acted on the advice still come to me from time to time with a message like, “Ken, it is really hard to get an interview these days.” No wonder. Act on my advice and I can guarantee with the right branding and marketing, your chances will improve exponentially!  Because . . . it’s not about what you show, it’s is all about the subliminal messages you are sending.

Get on LinkedIn – and use it!

With the sole exception of Germany, where stubborn Germans are reluctant to leave XING, which only Germans use, the rest of the Western world uses LinkedIn. Here are some reasons it is so important:

LinkedIn Reason 1: Companies now hire by hunting

Increasingly, companies do not rely on job advertisements to hire: it’s too wide a net to cast, and the net brings in the wrong kind of fish. So particularly for the jobs at the upper level, senior recruiters use LinkedIn to find you and contact you personally.

LinkedIn Reason 2: A user-friendlier CV

Many companies still require you to submit a CV or a resumé when you apply. But even those that do will probably use your LinkedIn profile rather than your CV. The trick is: enough of the right keywords to allow the right kind of people to find you, but no so much writing that it is difficult to read.

Optimizing your LinkedIn profile

If you create a LinkedIn profile, I recommend reading some articles that discuss LinkedIn search optimization. For example, the line under your name has a higher priority in the search than the rest of your profile – so instead of “wasting valuable real estate” by repeating your company or job title, add in the keywords that you want people to find you for – and add in the words that strengthen your brand.

 

Reflections of a Valley Guy — Part 6 “Hollywood discovers the Valley”

A guest blog, by Chuck Ritley

While I enjoy movies, I’ve never been interested in the goings-on in Hollywood.   To me, it was a crowded place to pass through to get to the Burbank Airport on my way home to The Valley.  That changed – for a while – in 1980.   At that time, computer terminals were downright ugly – just square boxes with keyboards.  But the company I worked for paid a Swedish design firm (I think they also did the 1979 Saab) to come up with a streamlined, injection molded terminal.  Same electronics – fancy look.

Six months after the intro, I got a call from a guy who said he was the prop master at Universal Studios.  He had seen one of our terminals, liked the look, and could I help him get one in a movie?  Sounded like great publicity, so I flew to Burbank and drove out to Universal.  It turns out that prop masters for major studios are big-time executives, with golf carts, managing everything from jet planes to spears.  But he made me welcome.

The movie that needed a computer was “Captain America”.  No, not the one you saw in 2014, with CGI and wide screen explosions.  This was the 1980 version.  No CGI, much smaller explosions.  The plot:  Captain A, who rides a nuclear-powered Harley, must save Phoenix from a nuclear bomb, but he needs a computer to figure things out.  That’s where we came in.

So I shipped a couple of computers and some terminals South and showed up at the studio for shooting the computer scenes.  The studio techs had built panels of flashing light, since our computers had none.  And I cobbled up some nonsense programs to make things jump on the screen.  But it was tough to keep a straight face while showing a guy in a red, white, and blue jump suit how to tap the keys.

We appeared for only 6 minutes in what was not a very good movie.  But, Universal fell in love with the design of the terminals, and I got offers to bring more equipment down for appearances in “The Rockford Files”, with James Garner, and “Mrs. Columbo” (the wife of the Peter Falk detective, who sadly only lasted for 4 or 5 episodes, but was computer literate.)

But the apex was this:  we provided the computer terminals for “ET”, while the studio did their own flashing lights.  (Next time you see a re-run, watch the credits closely.  We come up just before the caterers.)

And no, I never even saw Steven what-his-name.  And I had no idea it would become a classic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


This guest blog was submitted by Chuck Ritley, an adjunct professor of computer science with several major universities in the San Antonio area.  

Here are the links to the other blogs in this series:

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 1: “The Way It Was”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 2: “First Wave of Characters”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 3: “Evolution of the Geek”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 4: “When Giant Frys.com Sold Pork Chops”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 5: “Mr. Yee and the Albrae Street – Taiwan Connection”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 6: “Hollywood discovers the Valley”

Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 7: “The Hollywood adventures continue”

 

Google googled me!

The cool thing about the business social networking site LinkedIn is that you can see who has tried to look you up – well, at least you can see their company name. I recently stopped at a nuclear reactor in France – one day later someone from the Gendarmerie Nationale looked me up – coincidence?

(And by the way, if they did, think of the technology involved: scanning my vehicle, optical character recognition of the license plate, database lookup to find the owner, running the owner through searches like this – I hope they are using RPA, since it seems a very good candidate for robotic process automation. And if they are not – S’il vous plaît appelez-moi, et je suis heureux de prendre rendez-vous pour un conseil en technologie! )

Anyway, after “googling” many people myself I felt quite honoured and privileged to be the subject of their scrutiny,

Believe it or not – it’s been a bit over a decade – but if memory serves me right I once spoke with the present head of Google (Sundar Pichai) on the phone, naturally back before he was so famous. I wrote down his name in my notebook – but sadly I can’t find the notebook anymore to confirm.

The power people’s personalities provide!

Continuing the series, the following link was sent to me by my good friend Ertan yesterday, and I found it too good to resist.

The power people’s personalities provide – gosh that sounds nice and a way to reap important benefits!

But in fact the title of the website sounds negative and an approach for solving a problem: How to deal with difficult people.

Be that as it may, this website gives a nice overview of different personality types, and you can click on the personality type and you’ll find useful advice about how to work with people with that type.

It’s nothing new, of course – I just don’t know when it begun. The earliest such approach in my recollection was a terrific book from 2001 by J. Hank Rainwater entitled “Herding Cats: A primer for programmers who lead programmers.” You can find a PDF version on the Internet if you look hard enough. Surprisingly, I discovered it at exactly the right time, when I was new in the role of IT project manager and struggling with my first real project.

And it was followed by a wonderful chapter in a book by Patrick Schmid entitled Turbo Turbo Projektmanagement: Mit einfachen Mittel schneller zum Projekterfolg.”

And this in turn was followed by a less complete but – without doubt – much more useful approach by my ex-colleague and good friend Mario Neumann in his book Projekt-Safari.

Thanks, Ertan, great catch!

One of my favorite projects – 6 – Servant Leadership

Continuing the series, as part of a large IT transformation that I helped drive, it was necessary for us to hire 20+ talented IT professionals. And add to that around 30 mostly Indian colleagues that were to join us to run the Transition and Transformation (T&T) program. And add to that at least two other large IT teams we wanted to consolidate. And because we had so many people, it was necessary for us to locate and rent a building dedicated to IT. So I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take off my IT transformation hat and put on my facilities management hat.

This blog series recollects a bit of the journey before too much time passes and I forget some of the more interesting details.

Servant Leadership

If there is a message in this blog post, I don’t want it to remain hidden: it’s all about Servant Leadership. A job needs doing, and you are responsible for getting it done. Sometimes the best approach is to step back, lay the ingredients for success, then rely on motivation and coaching to let things fall into place.

Park your prejudices!

I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs that I had the pleasure of driving this project together with Christian Neuenschwander, the IT Manager’s IT Manager. If you give Christian a paperclip and a battery, he can probably build a network router.

Anyway, while chatting about this challenge I asked Christian what he thought would be our biggest challenge in this whole program. He just laughed at me and said without skipping a beat: putting together the desks and equipping them with the needed IT and power cables.

This is where my prejudices kicked in. I’d never done a project of this type, but surely putting together the desks and stringing them up with cables would be the easy part?  But this is also where my charburned fingertips and painful, bitter experiences came in: I knew Christian – I trusted Christian- and even if what he told me sounded like pure rubbish to my ears – which it did – I still decided to trust him.

Glad I did – Christian was right!

The challenge

Thankfully, we did not need to install the desks ourselves. I think I ordered nearly 75 desks, and they were delivered by a big team. They looked like this when they came in:

(Sadly, we did not have the money for height adjustable desks. That really upset many people, but it would have required a larger investment than we had in our budget.)

The delivery team took a factory line approach, so the assembly work was very structured and organized:

Finally, after assembling all the desks in the right places, the crew departed and it looked like this:

These guys were smart smart smart: although I ordered everything at the same time, the desk chairs were not even delivered until the desks were set up.  Picking the chairs, by the way, was no easy task. If you don’t know about industrial office chairs, believe me, can be much more complicated than you think, the better models even having specific adjustments because men and women tend to sit a bit differently on them, or with special features such as coat hangers built into the back.

Here is one of many snaps I took at the chair store,

Now came what I realized was indeed the hard part, equipping all these 75 desks with the needed IT and electrical infrastructure!

The solution: Use the Mark Twain / Tom Sawyer design pattern – and turn an awful job into team-building fun!

Christian was brilliant. His solution was to hold a do-it-yourself party. Christian and I would arrive early and get everything ready – but each person was responsible to equip the infrastructure for their desk. And not only that, but according to a very strict set of guidelines and finally quality-control: Christian would personally inspect the work before signing it off.

Here’s what it looked at when the gang got into high gear. First, think about the logistics. We had 75 desks, 2 monitors for each desk – and a keyboard – and a mouse – and a docking station – and a power-strip – and the LAN cables – and a bit of plastic that keeps everything together – that is a tremendous number of monitors and boxes and cables:

There was no other approach than just to use some of the conference rooms as temporary dumps:

The beauty of Christian’s approach is that everyone got involved – everyone. Here is my good friend Ann Duffy, the Senior Vice President of IT Business Applications, who we were lucky enough to recruit away from another company to have her come join us. She had very nearly 100 top IT application managers and eight teams in her global organization, yet here she is, crawling under her own desk and plugging in the cables.

This work was a real team-builder!

 

Job well done

Finally, the reward. After a long, long day I think Christian and I ordered nearly 30 huge pizzas for our hard working crew! Oh, and let’s not forget the beer, I think we bought 15 huge cases of beer, and probably 20 huge containers of Coca-Cola:

A final thought: the psychology of Servant Leadership and just plain hard work

Anyone who knows me knows that I love hard work. I’ve had hard jobs throughout my life, from housepainter to cook to forklift truck driver, where you ache and you sweat and you go home with bandages on your arms and splinters in your fingers.

But not everyone does.

And as I expected, this challenging 12-hour event gave people a chance to show their colors. Don’t get me wrong: everyone contributed above and (far) beyond the call of duty. It was hard work – and Christian and I are thankful for how it worked out. In our extended team of 70 people there was not a single person who did not pull his or her own weight.

Many people came – and worked hard – and ate their pizza – and went home. Job well done!

But . . . like Christian and I there were other hard-work-masochists and true servant leaders that really came to the forefront and stood out, such as our talented Head of IT Infrastructure and Operations Susanne, without whose help it would have even been more challenging for Christian and I. By the way, this was just one pile of boxes. We had about 12 more piles just this size. 75 desks x 2 monitors + keyboards + mice + cables + docking stations = one heck of a mess of boxes!

(There were 3 more “superstars” that also helped out – and I will think back on this fondly – but I am quite sure they don’t want the publicity or for me to show their photos.)

It’s a universal truth I’ve witnessed since my days of painting apartments in 45 C = 105 deg F weather in the hot, un-airconditioned Illinois summer sun: you don’t need to look hard for servant leaders, in fact you don’t need to look for them at all. They just magically show up whenever they see someone struggling or what looks like to be a challenge that needs extra help. (BTW: I’ve “parked” this idea. Sometime, someday, somewhere, I will need to find some servant leaders . . . and by running a large collection of people through a very difficult challenge, I am quite sure the real servant leaders will naturally sink to the bottom – where servant leaders belong – best positioned to help everyone else!)

Here’s Pascal, who is a real Facilities Manager and showed me the ropes of the job and helped me out, we really owned a huge debt to Pascal. As I’ve said in my other blog, Facility Manager is a true trade and profession that doesn’t always get the respect it may deserve:

And here’s Susanne and Christian – and one of 13 piles of boxes. The boxes were easy compared to disposing of all the Styrofoam packing.

Yes, that’s a flat screen TV. We ordered 12 of them, one for each conference room, and two on portable trolleys. We installed the trolleys ourselves but needed professional carpenters and the right brackets for the 10 fixed units.

Disciplined Agile – The Agile Team Lead

Continuing the series, the “Bible” for Disciplined Agile appears to be this book:

As I’ve mentioned earlier, my company has chosen to “go agile” – which is a good thing! But sadly not just at my company but throughout Switzerland – and frustratingly for me – many people continue to confuse agile with Scrum. Or worse, they deal with what I call GOs and IUs: Gross Oversimplifications and Impossible Utopias.

[ Interesting aside: in physics there is a handy phrase that we physicists pull out and use at times like this: assume you have a spherical cow undergoing simple harmonic motion….. Yes, sometimes an over-simplification can be useful as an instructive tool: a large cow may give more milk than a smaller one, and both are likely to produce milk on a daily schedule. But . . . this advice hardly a replacement for everything a dairy farmer needs for success. ]

In fact, I encounter many external consultants throughout Switzerland that claim unless you have a T-Shaped cross-functional team, you are not really doing agile. What utter nonsense!

Disciplined Agile sets things straight!

DA is neither a methodology nor a framework, but rather a big toolbox with the mantra “use what works.”

If you look in the drawer in the toolbox marked “Potential Roles and Responsibilities” this is what you’ll find:

These aren’t by any means required; in fact, the book states quite clearly these are potential roles.

Of all these potential roles, the description of the Agile Team Lead is what I find most impressive.  DA chooses specifically not to use the term Scrum Master – recognizing that there are many agile approaches (Lean, Kanban, to name a few) that do not have sprints or use the Scrum Methodology. Nevertheless, the job description for the Agile Team Lead will look familiar to anyone who’s learned about the Scrum Master’s role:

  • Guides the team through choosing their Agile Way of Work (WoW)
  • Facilitates close collaboration between all roles and functions
  • Ensures the team is fully functional and productive
  • Protects the team from interruptions and external influences
  • Facilitates decision making, but does not make decisions or mandate internal team activity

I’ll stop here . . . you get the idea!

Disciplined Agile

When I hear the term Disciplined Agile, I think of someone punishing Agile – and that makes me happy!

Agile needs a good punishing.

Reason: many companies in Switzerland are now investing strongly in agile (which is good) but like most agile advocates they teach and often attempt to set up Agile with GOs (Gross Oversimplifications) that only apply to IUs (Impossible Utopias).

Many companies in Switzerland also seem to suffer badly from the misconception that Agile = Scrum. This is entirely untrue, and it doesn’t help the situation. I’ve worked in classical waterfall projects that took ultra-agile approaches.

How does DA come in?

DA ist not a framework but rather a toolbox – toolboxes are always nice!

The Essence of Software Engineering – or, why agile is not enough

Sadly, too much literature about agile Ways of Working (WoW) is all about agile Ways of Working – and it stops there.

For Grossly Oversimplified (GO) Impossible Utopia (IU) situations, that works.

But in my own experience, for the real world complexity, agile Ways of Working are only the beginning.

Much, much more is needed for success. As put in the following article: Successful software development teams need to strike a balance between quickly delivering working software systems, satisfying their stakeholders, addressing their risks, and improving their ways of working.

There’s an interesting framework that may help; this is really very interesting and pragmatic stuff:

Don’t let this fool you, however. When I first looked at it, it immediately reminded me of maturity models, such as CMMI. In a maturity model, you can stop at the level that makes sense for you, or even have mixtures of maturity in different areas.

This is not that! As you’ll notice, here’s it’s all about degree of operationalization.

ANNIVERSARY: A digital machete thins out the digital jungle!

I honestly, positively cannot believe it – today marks the 20th anniversary of an article that appeared that described my work at the Max-Planck-Institute in Stuttgart!

I’ve done a lot of things in my life that have made me proud, usually challenges I tackled that worked out well.

But this is one of those whirlwind cases that start out as something innocent and simple but then explode into something you could never, ever possibly predict! In this case, a little software application for my “office buddy” to visualize his scientific data that was subsequently downloaded and used by thousands of scientists!

I have documented the full story about ScanRead and DataScan.

The dark and secret world of Facilities Management – 5

Continuing the series, as part of a large IT transformation that I helped drive, it was necessary for us to hire 20+ talented IT professionals. And add to that around 30 mostly Indian colleagues that were to join us to run the Transition and Transformation (T&T) program. And add to that at least two other large IT teams we wanted to consolidate. And because we had so many people, it was necessary for us to locate and rent a building dedicated to IT. So I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take off my IT transformation hat and put on my facilities management hat.

This blog series recollects a bit of the journey before too much time passes and I forget some of the more interesting details.

The dark and secret underworld of Facilities Management

I’ve worn a few different hats in my life: cook in a restaurant, forklift truck driver, landscape gardener, and professional house painter to name just a few of the most important ones. So it is not only fun but a privilege when life gives me the chance to establish working relationships with people in varied trades.

And it is even more fun and rewarding when I got to learn a new trade myself, in this case the honorable trade of Building Facilities Management.

And as you will read below, the world of Building Facilities Management has a very pleasant public face, but deep down inside it is really a dark, secret underworld, inhabited by god-like people that can accomplish anything – if you treat us with dignity and respect.

The outside view: the helpfulness gene

Paul Cottingham, one of the finest IT leaders I’ve ever known says time and again that IT hardware people (not the software guys) are all endowed with the helpfulness gene: they’ll go to any lengths to help other people, even at the cost of great self-sacrifice. And if you see the tremendous number of over-time hours they work – and how egregiously they underestimate IT project efforts (sadly incorrect, “it never helps to bring in external help” is their mantra).

And when I put on the Facilities Manager hat and joined this mysterious underworld, I learned quickly that Facilities Managers are endowed with this gene as well.

Because at the end of the day what gives us pride is to see the people working in and visiting our building. Are the desks comfortable? Are the meetings super-productive because the rooms are equipped with exactly the right flipcharts and whiteboards and speakerphones and wide screen televisions and coat racks and wastebaskets? Is the building filled with pleasant look plants that are also easy-to-care for, and are they watered and healthy? Walls clean? Carpets smelling fresh? Nice little mats to wipe your wet shoes on?

And think about what that requires, all those things and much more: flip chart pens and white board pens and someone having made sure there are the right telephone and LAN and power cables right where they need to be. Containers to water the plants.

So – how do we facilities managers make this look so simple?

Facilities Managers are like gods

It’s not wrong to think of us Facilities Managers as gods – hopefully benevolent gods, but gods nevertheless. Because your comfort, your tools, and your very productivity at work is in our hands.

The pride of our trade means we strive to do our best to provide all employees a good level of comfort, no matter how they treat us in return. But for those employees who treat us with dignity and respect, (which sadly is all too few people who do that) we aim to exceed your needs.

The question is, how exactly are we able to do this?

And the answer is, we don’t work alone.

A dark and secret underworld

At the risk of great personal harm, I will now officially spill the secret: Facilities Management is a dark underworld comprised of Facilities Managers – but not just those in your company, but those in all companies!  Our work knows no barriers. If I work for Company X and I have an old desk, and you work for Company Y and need a desk, you just give me a call and it’s done. Because in a few months time I may need a flipchart stand that you have but don’t need. Inter-company exchanges go on like this all the time.

Think about it: the Facilities Manager is likely to inherit many basements if not whole warehouses of old things: desks and shelves and coat racks and lockers. Sure, the new stuff probably has inventory labels, and those labels have numbers, and those numbers are in some spreadsheet in the finance department. But more than likely all that old stuff has been depreciated and written off and forgotten long ago.

I can’t mention any names – although there are many.

I can’t mention any examples – although there are many more.

I can only say that, during my brief time as Facilities Manager I got to meet some really terrific, passionate people who make up this dark and secret underworld. And with their help – and they with mine – we were able to make the people in our buildings content. And for those who treated us kindly, and with honor and respect, we were always able to exceed their expectations.

 

Under the wing

Under the wing of an Airbus A380, that is. In any European airport it would probably be unthinkable, but here I am in a car at the international terminal of the LAX airport in Los Angeles, driving directly underneath the wing.  There was plenty of clearance – but still, things of this nature are not allowed at most European airports.

In a previous job I worked for Swissport, at the time the world’s largest ground handling company that earned its money by tending to airplanes after landing and before take-off.

But what does this post have to do with IT?

Airports are divided into roughly two groups: those that are private and want to make a profit, and those that are public.

The airport at Zurich is a good example of a „normal“ private airport: if you are a company doing business there like Swissport, just ask for what you need (networks, WiFi, offices) – and the airport is more than happy to sell you what you need.

But Los Angeles is more of a public works type of airport. There are regions at the airport that are totally empty of any IT services or even wireless connections. How do you bring in innovate IT solutions when you can‘t connect to an Internet? Our talented IT crew like Rui and Juan always found clever approaches, but they weren‘t always the best approaches. For example, the network connection to our refueling facilities at LAX was accomplished via a satellite connection, but with a bandwidth measured in the high KB/sec.

Long story short: it‘s really a myth to think good IT services can be rolled out to the whole world. Many companies struggle with overcoming challenges that are no fault of their own!

Amazing how time flies

It‘s fair to say I stopped being an employed, practicing physicist in the year 2000, when I left the Max-Plack-Institute for Metals Research and joined Hewlett Packard Consulting & Integration.

According to Google Scholar I have published 45 „things“ that Google records in their list, most of them scientific papers but a few of them other things, such as proceedings of scientific conferences.

Nowadays, even more important than the number of articles that a scientist publishes is often the „citation index“ – or, the number of times another scientist has cited their work.  According to Google Scholar, here‘s what my citation index looks like over time:

The graph shows how many papers written by other scientists cited my work.

If you ask me, it‘s pretty incredible. Even though I have been publishing papers since the mid-1990‘s, and even though I stopped doing scientific research in the year 2000 – it seems the peak of my citations only occurred some years afterwards. There are lots of reasons for that – you have to pick things apart at the level of individual papers and collaborators – but I find it interesting nonetheless: if true more broadly, it means that scientists are not famous for what they do right now, but for what their work will lead to in a few years‘ time!

One of my favorite projects – 4

Continuing the series, as part of a large IT transformation that I helped drive, it was necessary for us to hire 20+ talented IT professionals. And add to that around 30 mostly Indian colleagues that were to join us to run the Transition and Transformation (T&T) program. And add to that at least two other large IT teams we wanted to consolidate. And because we had so many people, it was necessary for us to locate and rent a building dedicated to IT. So I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take off my IT transformation hat and put on my facilities management hat.

This blog series recollects a bit of the journey before too much time passes and I forget some of the more interesting details.

Ongoing third parties – coffee and drinks

The building we rented had three cafeterias: a large one with a full size refrigerator and a sink and enough place for seven or eight tables; a medium with with a full size refrigerator and a sink and enough space for three tables; and a small one with a half-size refrigerator and a sink and standing-room only.

This means we had a few luxury items to buy: plates and bowls and forks and knives and even miscellaneous things like bottle openers.

And we had a few necessary items to buy: fire extinguishers, first aid kits. It was also on my list to buy a portable, automatic heart defibrillator – but I never got around to it.

Being no expert in this area I really learned a lot from the professionals, especially my colleague Pascal who was a real facilities manager. We decided to explore having coffee, drinks, and even water delivered by an company specialized in this. (Yes, even water, because you get a water dispenser that must be kept current with plastic cups, a filter, plus a bottle to provide carbonated water on demand.)

The coffee service – which we later expanded to include vending machines – was an interesting learning experience for me. Essentially, you sign the contract and all the hardware and service is provided to you by the company. Additionally, someone from the company comes into the building daily to clean the machines and refill them if necessary. You pay the company on a pay-per-consumption basis. It is, quite literally, a plug-and-play service that even from my facilities management perspective could not have been easier.

Maybe pride goes before a fall, but nevertheless when I returned to the building several years later for a going-away celebration I could not help being a bit proud of what the cafeteria was stocked with, as this snap shows: