Posts Tagged ‘Sustainability’
Software Hell is a Crowded Place
I’ve been thinking a lot about management fads lately, and ran into this 2005 article by Nick Carr, titled “Does Not Compute”. Here’s the part that caught my eye:
“A look at the private sector reveals that software debacles are routine. And the more ambitious the project, the higher the odds of disappointment. It may not be much consolation to taxpayers, but the F.B.I. has a lot of company. Software hell is a very crowded place.”
Carr continues by describing two examples of failed projects: a massive systems integration effort at Ford Motor Company, and a overzealous business intelligence initiative embarked upon by McDonald’s. Both projects were cancelled when the price tags got too big: $200M for Ford, $170M for McDonald’s. The catch is that failure is good, because when we fail we at least know one solution path that’s not workable – we just need to 1) understand that it doesn’t have to be expensive, and 2) have more courage to allow ourselves and our colleagues to fail without getting depressed or thinking our coworkers are idiots. This is often expressed as “fail early, fail often“. (But note that the assumption is that you persist, and as a result of the learning experience, ultimately meet your goals.)
Without an effective team culture, rational managers, healthy relationships with stakeholders, and capable programmers dedicated to continually improving their skills, all roads can lead to software hell. The process of getting there – which is hellish in and of itself – is the famed death march. This is where a software-related project, doomed to fail, sucks up more time, people, resources, and emotional energy at an ever increasing rate until the eventual cataclysm.
Carr also cites The Standish Report, which in 1994, asserted that only 16% of projects were completed on time, and budget, and meeting specifications. By 2003 the percentage had grown to 34% in a new survey. Other projects that were still completed ran, on average, 50 percent over budget. (And this is for the survey respondents who were actually telling the truth. I know a few people who wouldn’t admit that their project was quite so grossly over budget.)
One way to solve this problem is by focusing on sufficiency and continuous learning, starting the blueprint for a system based on these questions:
- What features represent the bare minimum we need to run this system?
- What are the really critical success factors?
- What do we know about our specifications now? What do we not know?
- What do we know about ourselves now? What do we want to learn more about?
Software development is a learning process. It’s a process of learning about the problem we need to solve, the problem domain, and ourselves – our interests and capabilities. It’s a process of recognizing what parts of building the solution we’re really good at, and what parts we’re not so good at. Let’s start small, and grow bigger as we form stronger relationships with the systems that we are developing. Having a $170M appetite sure didn’t get McDonald’s anywhere, at least in this case.
What is Socio-Technical Design?
Tom Erickson, in his introduction to one of the sections in the forthcoming Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems
“Socio-technical design is not just about designing things, it is about designing things that participate in complex systems that have both social and technical aspects. Furthermore, these systems and the activities they support are distributed across time and space. One consequence of this is that the systems that are the sites for which we are designing are in constant flux. And even if we were to ignore the flux, the distributed nature of the systems means that they surface in different contexts, and are used by different people for different (and sometimes conflicting) purposes.”
Socio-technical design is, understandably, related to sociotechnology. There is much work to be done to develop the processes and techniques that will be required to manage quality and continuous improvement in the context of socio-technical design!
What is Sociotechnology?
Technology is the “sum of ways in which social groups construct the material objects of their civilizations.” The things that we use – the “design artifacts” of the processes used to build them – are socially constructed to the same extent that they are technically constructed. The convergence of technological and social insights in the creation, construction and use of artifacts is sociotechnology.
For example, we typically build a bridge when there’s some expectation that people need to get from Point A to Point B, and there’s something they need to bypass along the way (e.g. a river, a canyon, another road). Failure to consider the social factors as well as the technical factors could lead to a “bridge to nowhere” – and we all know at least one person who’s had a problem with those. Non-technical factors pertaining to the environment in which an idea is created and implemented are crucial.
According to Bunge (1998), sociotechnology is the process of applying insights from the social sciences to design policies and programs. More specifically, this is how Gingras & Niosi (1990) explain Bunge’s perspective:
Ten years ago we were talking about the convergence of customer touch points: phone, fax, web, cell phones, email and regular mail. With handhelds and mobile devices becoming more and more ubiquitous, and services like Facebook becoming more integrated into our daily lives, the next convergence is between people and the technologies we use. The boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred, and the impact of this convergence on business must be explored. Reviewing research by pioneers like Tom Erickson is a good place to start. We are all becoming sociotechnical.
(Note: Sociotechnology is an important part of socio-technical design.)
Bunge, M. (1985). Philosophy of science and technology. Vol. 7 of Treatise on basic philosophy, Dordrecht: Holland.
Bunge, M. (1998), Social Science under debate. A Philosophical Approach. Toronto University Press: Toronto.
Gingras, Y. & Niosi, J. (1990). Technology and society: a view from sociology, in Georg Dorn and Paul Weintgartner (eds.) Studies on Mario Bunge’s Treatise, Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Amsterdam and Atlanta, 421-430. Retrieved from http://www.archipel.uqam.ca/506/01/On_Bunge.PDF
Nieto, C. C., Neotropica, F., & Durbin, P. T. (1995). Sustainable development and philosophies of technology. Society for Philosophy and Technology, Vol. 1, Fall 1995. Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v1n1n2/nieto.html – (Note: I added this one simply because I really like it, and it’s related to the discussion on sociotechnology.)
A New American Competitiveness, Fueled by Relative Innovation
Innovation is in the eye of the beholder. The solution offered by the American Competitiveness Initiative focuses on absolute innovation, but does not consider relative innovation. Catalyzing relative innovation still requires a capital investment, but will focus less on the basic R&D issues and more on the issue of appropriate technology, even within the host country.
My Proposed Two-Pronged Approach to a New American Competitiveness takes these factors into consideration, and recommends two things we should do as a country:
1: Provide Practical Innovation Education to Everyone – We must educate EVERYONE on what innovation really is – the act of making ideas and inventions useful and relevant to people and social groups. Innovation is always relative, not not always absolute. Innovation is about creative problem solving that improves efficiency or productivity, expands capabilities, or enhances quality of life. We can all innovate in our local communities, even if we don’t come up with the complex or high-tech ideas ourselves! The key question is: How can we make individuals’ lives better? Innovation is not a mysterious practice reserved for scientists, engineers, or people with creative ideas. We can all be innovators.
2: Implement a National Quality Agenda – This idea, originally raised by ASQ President Robert Saco in the October 2008 issue of Quality Progress, embraces a “systems thinking” approach to resolving key social and sustainability issues at the national and international levels. How do we look at long-term issues through the lens of “systems thinking”? How do we transform our government’s budgeting process to accurately enact strategic themes and priorities, and promote real collaboration and cooperation that is not confounded by fictitious budget partitioning? How do we embrace innovation to make things better for all people? Saco introduces it this way:
What is to be done? Mr. President, in brief, we need a National Quality Agenda to broaden our thinking in terms of systemic and long-term issues and solutions. You cannot afford to ignore longer-term stealth issues like healthcare, energy, infrastructure and education. Ignored, these matters will ensure the accelerated decline of the nation. Government must not do everything, and with a looming federal deficit of $500 billion, it simply can’t do everything.
Yet, by promoting initial conditions that frame an appropriate long-term agenda and nurture an environment of possibility and collaboration, the stage is set for real progress in the months and years to come.
New is not always better. Innovation, however, always seeks to make things better! (In case this seems like a paradox to you, the missing link is invention – inventions are always new, but they don’t necessarily need to be useful to many people to retain their novelty.) Sometimes, just looking at how to change our perspectives, simplify our existing structures, and take a quality-driven approach, we can uncover new ways to innovate. Are you ready to take the leap?
The Relativity of Innovation
Increasing innovation is something that many companies want to do to enhance and sustain competitiveness. In “Will the American Competitiveness Initiative Work?” I asked whether throwing money at the problem is the best approach.
I ask this question because most of the books and academic literature on innovation only consider the absolute aspects of innovation. For example, how do you come up with new ideas? Or bring disparate ideas together into new amalgams of ideas? How can you unite the right people to stimulate productive collaboration? How do you generate new patentable machines and methods? [I’m thinking about books like Kelley’s The Art of Innovation
But innovation is relative to a person, a community, or a society – and the social context within which these people interact with one another. The concept of appropriate technology considers that the progress and advancement brought about by innovation might involve a simple, uncomplicated solution. With this in mind, here are the two genres that an innovation can follow:
- Absolutely Innovative – A new idea, invention or product is implemented, possibly in a new social context or for a new purpose. Examples: iPod/iPhone, composite materials, social networking software, nanotechnology. The novelty of these innovations is clear – it’s new to everyone, but is possibly only useful to some.
- Relatively Innovative – It might not be a new idea, invention, or product, but it is implemented in a new context or for a new purpose. Example: bringing clean water to an impoverished village. Is it absolutely innovative? No, because the technology for producing clean water is not new. But the way in which the technology is integrated into the new environment might yield great benefits to the local community, and thus be considered an earth-shattering innovation.
There are a few visionary researchers who are more sensitive to relative innovation – in particular, C.K. Prahalad’s The New Age of Innovation 
A New American Competitiveness can be fueled by relative innovation. (One more day and I’ll post my two-pronged strategy.)
Will the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) Work?
The financial meltdown and struggling markets have renewed the need to catalyze innovation through science and technology policy. For example, John Doerr, the internationally recognized partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, has remarked that Obama needs to “kick-start a huge amount of innovation and research in energy”. At the same time, Doerr notes that the new administration needs to invest more in high-tech education, solve the visa bottleneck problem for highly skilled workers in technology and R&D, and take a good look at the proportion of funds going to research in various areas. He gives the example that approximately $1B a year is spent on energy research, while $32B is invested in health care.
The American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI; 3.95MB), introduced by President Bush in his 2006 State of the Union Address, was signed into law as the America COMPETES Act (Public Law 110-69) to help make this happen. The essence of the ACI is that it proposes to increase educational programs and double the funding for basic research in physical sciences and engineering (at NIST, the DOE Office of Science, and the National Science Foundation) over a ten-year period. For example, for NSF the ACI proposed a funding boost from $6.02B in 2007 to $11.16B in 2016 (in 2007 dollars). A summary of the ACI from the Office of Science & Technology Policy is also available. Despite its noble intentions, Congress failed to deliver on the promise of funding in the first year. A limited boost was evident by the FY 2009 budget, but the increase is at risk due to the Continuing Resolution through 3/6/09 which could potentially extend through the full fiscal year – and wipe out the promised increase yet again.
But throwing money at the problem might be oh-so-Bush-Administration, as Jonathan Moreno suggests in his Science Progress interview with Caroline Wagner, author of The New Invisible College.
According to Wagner, the concept of researchers collaborating across academic and national boundaries started in the 17th century. Although this practice continues today, there is now a growing chasm between researchers in developing countries and their communities – and it can be argued that a similar gap might exist even in more advanced economies:
We need to rethink science. We tended to think of science as the trip to the moon, as the AIDS vaccine. These are great things and I love them too. The difference is now, as opposed to previous periods, is that we have this cadre of knowledge that we can’t lose it. It’s so critical to our potential as a civilization. We have this knowledge. We can use it, if we can make it available so that people can solve problems locally.
One of the great unsung stories of science success is the agricultural extension service in the United States. It is a case where local loops and experimentation, along with integrated learning, diffused information over time. This is a beautiful example, and shouldn’t be lost on us so that we’re focused on questions like “are we funding the greatest physics ever?” Let’s look at funding that answers the question, “how do we make individual people’s lives better?”
I’ll cover my “Two Pronged Approach to the New American Competitiveness” tomorrow. Hint: it requires focusing on the fundamental definitions of technology and innovation. By going back to first principles, we may be able to establish a policy recipe for sustainability and innovation in one broad brush.
Questions for a Technology Assessment
If you’re already familiar with what a technology assessment is all about, here are some examples of questions you can ask to help form ideas to shape your analysis:
Drexler, K.E. (1986). Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, New York: Anchor Press, Doubleday.
Landon, B. (1997). Science Fiction After 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars, New York: Twayne.
Rodemeyer, M., Sarewitz, D. & Wilsdon, J. (2005). The future of technology assessment. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Retrieved on Nov 17, 2007 from http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/docs/techassessment.pdf
