Big Decisions June 16, 2008
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Dress Code, Shoes
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Being a CIO has lots of benefits but carries big responsibilities as well. For better or worse, the really big decisions get pushed up to you, forcing you to make difficult and sometimes divisive rulings on critical issues facing your organization.
Like, for example, women’s casual footwear.
We have a dress code in my organization that is designed to let people be comfortable while maintaining a professional work environment. This includes wearing “appropriate footwear.” As warmer weather approaches, people start wondering what that means, exactly.
For the men, it’s pretty easy: almost any reasonably-maintained shoe except sneakers is acceptable. For women, it gets harder. Open-toe shoes have prompted great debate in my group. Are flip-flops allowed? If not, what about “dressy sandals?” What about “strappy sandals?” What about open-toe flats that aren’t actually sandals? Open-toe, with or without a heel strap? Slingback as opposed to buckled? Sandals, but without a toe thong? What about those new gladiator sandals? Leather or plastic? What about plastic that looks like leather?
Big decisions like this cannot be delegated to lower levels of your management team. Only you possess the Solomonic wisdom to define a single standard by which all sandals, strappy or otherwise, will be judged. You must meet this challenge head on and appease everyone at once.
Thus we have another Profile In Courage: What constitutes appropriate women’s sandals for professional wear?
My answer: if you can submerge the sandal in a bucket of water without upsetting the owner, it is not appropriate. If the owner would be greatly annoyed by having her sandal submerged and ruined, it is appropriate for our workplace.
This test instantly rules out most everything you would typically wear to the beach or the pool, but leaves in everything you’d wear to dinner or an evening out on the town. Amazingly, most of the women in my group who consider this solution find it acceptable. While there are exceptions to both sides of this test, they are small enough that the vast majority of footwear can be easily and unambiguously judged.
Notice that this solution does not apply to the men. Most men would barely flinch at soaking-wet shoes since our shoes, wet or dry, look and feel about the same.
With another big issue resolved, I can return to less pressing matters. What a relief!
The Circle of (IT) Life June 3, 2008
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Best Of 2008, Math, Staffing, Support
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For years, computers have been touted as offering limitless capability, with some fabulous new feature just around the corner. Unfortunately, we’ve been delivering on that promise, over and over. Mainframes begat minicomputers. We then offered up personal computers. Then we created local areas networks, which grew into wide area networks, which grew into the internet. We offered simple file transmission, which turned into text-based email, which became multimedia email with attachments and embedded content of every flavor. We developed FTP sites and bulletin boards that turned into web sites that exploded into the web as we know it. Now we’re layering all sorts of services atop the web, making computers even more indispensible to an ever-increasing user community.
The problem is that all of the new stuff did not replace the old stuff. It simply extended it, which means that we have to keep most of the old stuff running. Even worse, we’re getting better and better at running all this technology, so users naively think it is getting easier and easier. Email and internet connectivity used to be an amazing capability that astounded previously unconnected users. Now, these services are expected to just be there, like electricity and running water. Trust me, it is no less complicated to keep these services running now than it was ten years ago, but we are expected to do so with smaller and more focused staffs.
Think of IT as an expanding circle. The new stuff is at the edge, where users see and appreciate cool new capabilities. The infrastructure is everything in the circle, hidden from users but crucial to maintaining the edge. Our job is to expand the circle. Each time we grow the circumference (adding a new service of some sort) the area inside grows in proportion to the square of the change, so that the amount of interior stuff grows much faster than the visible stuff. If each IT person can only cover so much area in your circle, you’ll soon be unable to keep up. And as the circle gets bigger, each incremental change makes it that much worse.
Consider one of my favorite numerical illusions: if you stretch a band around the equator and add exactly one foot to that band, how far off the surface of the Earth will the band rise? Most people think of the size of the Earth, compare it to just one foot, and answer with a tiny number. The real answer is about 1.9 inches. Since the circumference of a circle equals the diameter times π, and you just added 12 inches to the diameter, you added 12/π (3.82) inches to the diameter of the band. The band lifts up by half that amount (since the radius of the circle is half the diameter) or 1.91 inches.
That number is the same, by the way, if you add 12 inches to a band wrapped around an orange. The difference in the surface area? Adding one foot to the band around a 3-inch orange increases the area inside the band by about 29 square inches. Adding that same foot to the band around the Earth increases the area by almost half of a square mile!
Which size circle would you rather support?
Achieving Critical Mass May 19, 2008
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Leadership, Teams
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In my most recent posting, I began by discussing the basic criteria for a successful nuclear explosion: getting the right material in the right place at the right time. In a blinding flash of obviousness (obviosity?) I realized that this is true of so many things in life, particularly in the role we all seek to play as leaders.
It is a sad fact that those of us living towards the top of the org chart do very little real work. Instead, we direct, manage, and inspire those below us who actually do productive things on a regular basis. Our job is making sure the right people do the right things the right way and understand why.
As leaders, it is not enough to simply spout some grand scheme and stand back and watch it unfold. It is our job to make sure the right people come together at the right time with the right resources. Our people often cannot bring all that together; they lack the authority or wherewithall to make it all happen. Instead, they look to us to bridge those gaps, break down the barriers, and orchestrate the myriad of elements beyond their control that ensure their success.
It is easy to miss this critical aspect of our job. Poor leaders often blame their teams for failing to bring it all together when they actually carry the responsibility for making their team successful. In some cases, teams cannot see all the pieces of the puzzle, let alone figure out how to put them all together. We need to do that, and our teams need to trust that we are doing this for them.
This need not involve dramatic micromanagement or a heavy-handed approach. Often, simply asking the right question at the right time is all it takes. Questions that begin with “Did you consider…” or “Did you talk to…” or “Have you thought about…” may be enough to start a train of thought that leads to a better solution to a problem.
Truth be told, it’s fun and rewarding to see all those parts come together to create something great. It may not be as cool as building your own nuclear weapon, but it is a real pleasure when a plan works just like you hoped it would.
A Slide What? May 15, 2008
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Education, History, Math
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My son and I were driving home from an errand last night, engaged in a typical Guy Discussion: the mechanics of building a nuclear weapon. My son observed, correctly, that building an atomic bomb was easy; it was getting it to explode that was really hard. The trick, I pointed out, was getting the right material in the right shape at the right time.1
My son asked how the first bomb designers did this. I replied that while current designers use extensive computer simulation (which is why we design and build ever faster computers: bomb design and weather prediction), the original designers did it all by hand, with slide rules.
My son looked at me and asked, in all seriousness, “What’s that?” I gave him an incredulous stare, completely at a loss for words.2 “No, really. What is that?” My son, 13, is an outstanding student, way ahead of the curve in math and science and currently fascinated with computer-aided bridge design. He was asking an honest question.
“Umm, well, it’s a computing device. It has three wooden sticks with numbers, and you slide them back and forth to line them up so that you can multiply and divide. Nicer ones have extra scales for trig functions.” To help bring this detailed description to life, I used my fingers to simulate the mechanical action of a slide rule.
I may as well have tried to describe some medieval leather tanning contraption or a turn-of-the-century gadget that trimmed lamp wicks. For a teenager with his own cell phone, laptop, iPod Touch, and game console, the idea of a wooden calculator is either pathetic or hilarious. I half-believe he thought I was making it all up just to tease him.
Sigh. Another cultural touch point has been reached. Slide rules are officially ancient and unknown to the current generation. Close on its heels are tape in any form (cassette, 8-track, reel-to-reel), followed by analog video. Phones with cords aren’t far behind, either. Time marches on. Does it matter? Yes and no.
In terms of the actual device, it doesn’t matter. I have my father’s K&E Log Log Decitrig slide rule, a beautiful device that was given to him when he graduated college with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. It was his most important tool on a daily basis and no practicing engineer could work without one. It still works, although the slide sticks a bit. Still, it has been completely replaced by calculators of all stripes and for good reason: slides rules are only accurate to a few digits and are slower to use.
In terms of how it works, the loss of “slide rule awareness” is devastating. General math abilities in the US are at an all-time low. No one knows how logarithms work, or why this might be important. No one understands precision, accuracy, or error ranges any more. As a result, people cannot interpret numerical data, understand relationships, or make informed decisions. Even worse, it has become apparent that most people cannot compute percentages or interest rates on a loan. A disturbing number of cashiers cannot compute the change from $20 in their head.
Not everyone should be able to use a slide rule. But maybe if we tried to teach everyone to use one, a pleasant side effect might be that everyone would at least learn percentages, and subtraction, and the ability to discern “bad” numbers from “good.” Such an education will never happen; we’d wind up with lots of people who feel bad about themselves because they failed the slide rule test, and that’s just not acceptable these days. Instead, we’re building a nation full of happy idiots, lacking the basic skills to survive in a modern world but certainly feeling very good about themselves.
1How like life itself. See my next blog post for more on this.
2Those who know me can attest how shocking this situation is: I am never at a loss for words.
Professionalism May 12, 2008
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Engineering, Professionalism
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I am an engineer. Specifically, a Software Engineer. Although my career has taken me to a senior management position in my field, my core skills are those of the engineer. I am trained to evaluate, analyze, design, and solve problems. In the same way that every CFO is an Accountant, even as a CIO I am a Software Engineer.
To further cement that discipline, I am an Engineer from Georgia Tech, one of the finest engineering institutions on earth. I carry the traditions and reputation of that school with me and am required to be not just an Engineer, but a Hell Of An Engineer. To be anything less is a personal embarrassment and diminishes all those engineers that came before me and that will follow in my footsteps.
In short, I take this stuff pretty seriously.
This past week I had the unfortunate opportunity to deal with software that is the result of decidedly unprofessional engineers. Various systems that we are in the process of deploying failed in test and early release because the developers were not professional, were not disciplined, did not care, and most certainly do not carry the title of Engineer. I should note that this software is being supplied by external vendors; it is not the result of my team or anyone I work with. Good thing, too.
In the first case, a team of developers decided to skip their normal quality control process and not fully test the customizations they are developing for us. In the course of development, they also decided to replace, in mid-stream ,certain database drivers on the production system. The result is that we were handed a system that in its first test spewed out 10,000 errors. Fortunately, the system is limited to reporting 10,000 errors so it stopped at that point.
The lack of disciplined engineering allowed this team to break all sorts of rules. The idea that you would develop and release code without testing is incomprehensible to me. The idea that you would change a core system component on the fly, in production, is horrific. That you would ultimately expose your customer to all this is embarrassing and unacceptable.
The second case involves a piece of software that has one of the worst configuration interfaces I’ve seen in a long time. Without going into detail, be assured that it is confusing, cryptic, hard to use, and breaks dozens of well-understood UI design principles. The fact that making a mistake in this interface would knock hundreds of users offline and potentially corrupt their personal data only makes it that much worse. Whoever developed this interface truly did not care for the end user or make any effort to understand how the tool would be used.
How do these situations arise? When we fail to train new members of our profession, discipline falters. When we refuse to hold people to high standards, quality suffers. When there is a lack of accountability, errors are tolerated.
As Professional Software Engineers, we are required to enforce the discipline our field requires to ensure that we have the trust and confidence of our users. If we were building bridges or skyscrapers, we’d be in jail for these kinds of errors. Although our failures may be less dramatic, they are no less important.
If you, like me, seek to carry the title of Software Engineer, take it seriously. Wear it with pride, but earn the right to wear it, no matter what your position or title.
The Effective CIO 