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And I think it could be a winner!
If there is anything that really pisses me off, it's failure. Failure to deliver1, failure to pay attention to the small details2, complete failure to implement something that might even remotely work!3 But even worse, failure to accept that failure just might be normal. Even really bright people make mistakes.
I'm still determined to find a way to link Law and Information Systems - but with Failure, I don't think that'll be too hard.
I'm definitely keen on Strategic Thinking, and the Pragmatic kind still looks like a winner.
Key themes in my work will still be Trust and Integrity. And I'm very much an advocate of Simplicity, Flexibility, and Responsibility also.
To be clear, it is not Failing that pisses me off, its the avoidance of being associated with failing. Finding any way possible to Not Be The One Who Failed™. That, IMNSHO, is a real winner of a way to fail. Lots. Big time. That, and completely ignoring anyone who might be even suggesting that your winning approach is, or might be, collapsing around you. What would they know anyway, right?
The Failure I have in mind is systemic, built right into the whole shebang.
Why should anyone be happy with a Fault-tolerant system, when what we really need are fault-coping, or failure-absorbing ones. Perhaps scrapping the stupid Perfection model of Reality™, and replacing it with just looking out the window occasionally? Or leaving the desk for a while. And stop worshipping the Accountancy-susceptible, Economically-imagined bottom-line for a while.
In case you're wondering, I've been reading Frank Furedi's Culture of Fear and Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? with The Politics of Fear next on my list.
I find myself agreeing with much of what Furedi has to say, and many of his conclusions about what to do about it. For a sociologist, he doesn't suck completely. Even for a Marxist. But I do have my doubts, and my disagreements. Crap. I'm engaging with what I'm reading and all that stuff.
Next I'll be drafting a thesis statement or something.
- "We'll have it to you by Friday" - but you don't - and I'm sure you weren't being general as to any old Friday. Especially as I just paid extra to have it "expressed" - whatever that is ...
- Like, there ought to be toilets in buildings if people are expected to work in them all day. Some, any. In the original design. Having to retrofit toilets and 'disabled' access to multi-million dollar buildings is just stupid. And they're still 'upgrading' the 'landscaping' around them to achieve accessibility ...
- Too busy playing politics to actually do your damn job. Or hire someone else to do it for you.
excited
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I'm currently doing a subject on project management in IT, and I read an interesting report that suggested that 31.1% of IT projects will fail utterly and becancelled before completion, 52.7% will suffer time and/or budget blowouts and of the 16.2% that come in on time and on budget about half are missing a lare stack of features that were initially proposed. It is estimated that these failures cost in the 100s of billions of dollars each year. The stats were much worse for large companies than small ones.
The report suggested that the main reason for all this failure was a desperate desire to conceal and ignore failure, or blame it on something else, than to recognise and learn from it...
I think I've been forced to work on about 80% of those.
Which is exactly my point 8|
The Navy currently has a Billion dollar Helicopter SNAFU ... for pretty much the same reason. Ditto, MPAA/RIAA.
I so, so, so despise the mentality and operations that lead to that kind of stupidity.
UniSA has a PM topic for it's IS peoples. Many students spend more time fiddling with MS Project than would be spent actually getting the damn project done. And it's not much different "out there" in Reality-Land™!
Failure is a very uncomfortable and extremely unpopular topic, so I'll probably be asked to change it around to sound more positive. We'll see.
I hope to play with some Managment and Organisatonal Psychology stuff, while laying about with my +10 (+3 versus vampires) Longsword of Lawness, and my +5 (+2 versus lycanthropes) Short Sword of Information Systemsese.
Something needs ot be done, and I guess I'm the Ranger who has to get the damn job done. Can't trust the Paladins to do anything for you these days ..
Re: I think I've been forced to work on about 80% of those.
I also suspect that it can be very very hard to get everyone involved in a project to take it seriously - even when it's the multi million dollar kind. There's so much BS floating around that people forget that it's only BS because no one took it seriously enough to come up with a better idea/follow through with any good ideas that were had.
Here's a neat think I just read about anti piracy - aparrently Sony is thinking of adding DRM to their new Blue Ray technology that will fry your playstation hardware if it detects dodgy hacked software, requiring you to take your hardware to a shop to get it fixed. Okaaaay. The one guy who is going to buy that won't make it to the shop that day because he'll be in the line outside the shop that charges $200 to rape you with a hot poker.
Re: I think I've been forced to work on about 80% of those.
It's also a culture thing. I work for Large Multinational tech companyTM and one thing that frustrates me a lot is some of the ways that the foreigners I deal with work.
Some people won't ask you questions if they don't know things, because they fear they are showing their ignorance. Despite the fact that it takes about 10 times as less time to ask someone who knows than to work it out yourself.
Some people are very overprotective of their code or the team they manage because they think you're out to steal their job. Well, I'm definitely not, because I know exactly when my job ends (September). Yet, they're still overprotective. We work for the same damn company, dammit!
Some people won't give an honest report of the status of their task... because they might be running late, and won't hit the deadline. Frankly, if I'm going to run late, I say so, just so the manager's expectations aren't thrown out of whack too late to replan.
As an Aussie, I don't care too much about saving face. I know I work well, and sometimes circumstances get beyond control. I know I will get rewarded for good work, because it's happened before, and the management in Australia is fair, and work in a meritocracy. (Well, I may not get any more rewards in my current job, but hey).
But in certain cultures (Asian, Indian, less so in the US, but it happens) there's so much selfishness in careers that you have to protect your own arse/save face (arse about face?) all the time, that if the project fails, instead of investigate the root cause, it's all about making sure you don't get blamed.
I have a friend in Malaysia who after 5 years of complaining to me on an almost daily basis about how she was mistreated in her job for Another LMTCTM she finally quit and went to a new company. Immediately she didn't like it, because they took a while to get her a new computer... and then she was laid with a task, expected to complete it in a week or two with no background knowledge. I said she should ask the team members to help her... and she said their attitude was that she was trying to infiltrate their little clique and they tried to block her out and not give her any information... AND THESE ARE PEOPLE ON THE SAME DAMN PROJECT!
It seems crazy to me, in this industry, that people put individual performance over teamwork, because without teamwork a project will fail. And if the management were doing things fairly, the process will get blamed instead of individuals. But it sounds like that sort of behaviour doesn't exist in those cultures.
In her old company, their idea of team building was compulsory socialising with your workmates - going to bars after work, going away for a weekend holiday (only subsidised by the company, not fully paid for) and stuff like that. Team building isn't just getting to know your team mates, or even being friends with them. It's about respecting their knowledge, skills and abilities, and using these as a team to the best of everyone's abilities. Everyone has something to contribute, and hopefully it can be spread across the team. You'd think in a workplace situation, there wouldn't be any really really thick people/dead wood, because if they're smart enough to have the resume & pass the interview to get the job, surely they know at least a little about programming?
I think I've lost the thread of my comment as I've gone off on a rant.
And I should reboot the computer so I can start my work for the day.
Seeya!
Fifth Wheel
Imagine working in those kinds of environment and not having any idea what the Hel is going on.
Even smart people do stupid things. Emotions are powerful.
As a long time Fifth Wheel™, it has taken me a long time to break out of an endless cycle of being The Outsider™. Along the way, I've seen a parade of stuff ups and so forth. Fear of Failure, and the inevitable Blame Game when it occurs, left me speechless for years (well, actually, I said a lot. changed nothing.)
Now I'm looking to carve out my own piece of specialist mediocrity :P
Re: I think I've been forced to work on about 80% of those.
A cultural flaw that is well past due being addressed.
Again, to my mind, that's a serious cultural flaw - at the very least a problem with the organisation/corporation involved, though I suspect somewhat more endemic.
It's been considered before. But pointless. Hackers are much more creative than most corporations - and some people have the spare cash to go through a few units just for hte fun of being able to stick it to the man™
Again with the "Broken Business Model" ...
Only if he somehow managed to accidentally find himself with a girlfriend ... *beams*
How long did it take for someone to figure out how to get around the DRM in iPods? The "region" crap in DVD's? etc.
(no subject)
My main hassle, both with those figures and with the notion of "failure" in IT, is that it isn't clear to me what, exactly, consitutes a true "failure". Reducing features on a on-time and on-budget project may also be looked at as simply refinement as a result of the development process. Being over-budget may not be a project failure as such, but the result of modifying a project to meet changing needs in a competitive environment, and the successful meeting of those needs - even with a budget blow out - may be seen as an ideal response. I've suggested before that perhaps a good approach to IT failure could come from the emergancy wards in hospital - success or failure isn't measured in absolutes, but by a variable scale based on the severity of the problem vs the nature of the outcome. If someone comes in having been shot 15 times and run over by a car, but leaves alive (albeit with the loss of both legs) one would probably look at this as a successful outcome. Even the death of the patient wouldn't necessarily be regarded as a failure - just the natural outcome of a horrible situation. If someone comes in with a broken toe, and dies in the emergancy ward, this could be see as a rather serious failure.
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Then I'm fairly cynical about stats, having interacted with academic psychology for so long.
It seemed kind of relevant to what Maelorin was pondering for his PhD, so I thought I'd share.
I agree about justifying the course - it's bloody annoying to have to sit through such a shallow few week long brush over of organisational theory when I'm supposedly there to learn how to manage networks of computers...
(no subject)
One thing I do find curious, though, is how large businesses had over 10% more "challenged" projects compared with small-medium businesses. I suspect that project scale comes into play here.
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I'm getting very curious about the factors, the actual factors, that come into play when the size +/- complexity of a project grows - or where it hits some kind of 'critical mass' (wherever, whatever, that might be).
Thanks :)
It was stats that turned me off psych, way back when. (Thought he women were more plentiful than even Biology :)
Keep in mind thoght, that most fo your colleagues probably don't have a background in OrgPsych :)
Also, having some idea baout what PM is, and how is supposed to work, is not a bad idea. Seems to me the execution is flawed. I'd have given my justification for lumping this on you upfront.
Then again, I do/did play Nosferatu and Ventrue anti-tribu ... :)
(no subject)
OH! A challenge!
That could make a PhD, don't you think?
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For more dangerous and catasrophic failures read the newsgroup comp.risks for some ideas.</td></tr></table>
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I imagine another sortie might be a good idea. Thanks.
fear of failure
A similiar solution occurs in politics where the authorities cannot be seen to be doing nothing. The need to meddle in a situation to prove their innate value often causes problems. Especially when you combine both military and political situations.
I like engineering failure analysis, especially when you get to apply it to the jellyware components as well. However the problem with "there are no accidents in accident investigation" is that an engineering failure analysis is quite distinct from a legal failure analysis ("fault" as opposed to "blame"). However few people realise this, which makes working on an accident investigation team such ... fun.
Read Feynmann's third semi-autobiography for NASA dealing with the Columbia accident for example. he, the physicist, wanted to know what happened. The rest of the team wanted to know who was getting the blame.
Remember that both bureacracies and committees are mechanisms that remove fault and responsibility from individuals, which is why they are so ineffective.
Re: fear of failure
I'm interested in engineering failure analysis, AND legal failure analysis - damn technerdy lawyer. I'm leaning more towards legal-technical system failure analysis. Actually, I'm considering options and looking for some advice because whatever I pursue, there needs to be a real job at the end.
More stuff to read. Cool!
Indubitably.
Doesn't stop me from wanting systems to not only work, but to achieve something ...
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Then again, most of my work has been in fields where the consequences of failure are usually quite serious (as in, people will die), so this definitely reflects on my thinking.
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Double-extra-good with social mechanisms.
Fixing them afterwards is fun too. Sometimes.
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Ah ha! I knew I was looking at this all the wrong way about!