SUO: Re: Lifecycle Integration Schema
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
LIS. Discussion Note 40
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
JA = Jon Awbrey
MW = Matthew West
JA: I have voted NO the first question and YES on the second question,
but I am still open to having my mind changed on the first issue.
My concerns with the first proposal are these:
MW: And there was me thinking that it was the first motion
that was uncontroversial!
JA: The spirit of the motion is all mom and apple pie, as we say over here,
but between the spirit and the letter many a head has been seen to roll.
My fear and trembling, etc. is over seeing yet another robot's rules of
order approach to questions of inquiry and engineering. Orderly method,
where we find it, is a boon to inquiry, but the brand of language game
that lawyers can beat engineers at 99 times out of 100 is more often
than not used to quash any attempt to address the real problems
that exist in plain sight.
MW: This sounds like "We might fail so let's not try". I would rather say
"Don't try unless you are prepared to fail". Of course it could all go
wrong, but I've worked in contentious environments and have positive
experience of applying processes that encourage good outcomes where
previously there was underachievement, so I have reason not to be
so pessimistic.
Not in the least. That might be a fair comment if we hadn't both been
working here for the last 3+ years, and paying attention to what keeps
happening on a recurring basis. I am saying "We have already fallen --
now how exactly are we going to get up?" Experience tells me what
can happen, and it's not pessimism to draw on that experience in
order to make different mistakes, at least, the next time around.
So I have a real need to ask specific questions about the design of your
procedures, just like I have a real need to ask specific questions, based
on my real experiences, good and bad, with what actaully happens in reality,
about the design and the operating characteristics of the new-fangled furnace
I'll be buying this week.
Let me try to rephrase the question this way:
1. How do we really know when a problem is solved?
I, too, have positive experiences with methods that work.
And that's precisely why I have always tried to approach
our work here in the spirit of the literature-reading and
problem-solving seminars in which I spent the greater part
of a decade as a multiphase alternating cycle grad student
in comp sci, math, psych, and stats. I do not recommend it
as a way to pick up a degree in a hurry, but it was the best
way there was to learn the subjects in question. Most of my
math professors and some of my psych professors understood the
the fact that their D.Phil.s and Ph.D.s gave them but the first
elements of a small fraction of their subjects, and it was usual
to spend the rest of their lives trying to teach each other a bit
more of the subject, and to work together to try and tackle a few
more of the vast array of problems that yet remain to be conquered.
Given that experience as an idea of how things ought to work,
the question for me is whether the design of your procedures
will give this fallen effort that kind of a lift up, or not.
JA: I am suspicious of bureaucratic procedures that achieve
an illusion of consensus about a given issue or a pretence
of credibility for a given document, when no such consensus
or credibility really exists. We have had our fill of such
procedures already, and so I am naturally somewhat wary of
seeing anymore of this kind of sleight-of-hand.
MW: It is a common misapprehension of standards that they "enforce"
some thing or other. In fact their sole purpose is to prevent
you from having to reinvent something mundane everytime you
want to use it. In this case the mundane thing is how to
raise the quality of something by noting defects and
systematically trying to remove them, against some
stated quality criteria.
JA: Again, I stand up and salute this glorious flag.
But that is not the problem that I'm worried about.
The original furnace in our 20 year old house having
seen the last days of its lifecycle of faithful service,
I'd like to think that all of the various certifications
brochured before our eyes by the heating and cooling guys,
from ACRIS to AFUE to NATE to SEER to UL, and many whose
logos these old eyes are far too farseeing to unravel at
close range, actually mean something.
JA: What I hope for in the semantics of these logos is that some body
of technically competent engineers and humanely-minded ergo-nomics
professionals have all done their homework, both when they went to
school in schools of engineering and ergo-nomics, and when it came
to deciding whether to stamp their logo on these 8.5 x 11 glossies.
And beyond all that, I hope that there was some overarching spirit
of public and human interest in the performance of this competence.
JA: The devil or the god, as they say,
depending on how you translate it,
is in the details.
MW: The process would tend to support those that stubbornly point out reality.
That is the long run hope, of course, and I share it.
But just saying that a given design of procedure will
do what you say is not enough. I have seen a kind of
short-run process that does just the opposite of what
you say, ignoring what are obvious realities to just
about everybody who is not already hypnotized by the
procedural ritual. But it's become some kind of sin
here to mention the fact that there is knowledge out
there that many communities of knowledge consider to
be quite "standard" already, that if our start-work
documents do not contain it, and if our pet logical
formalisms have trouble dealing with it, then they
will remain non-starters for the rest of the world,
whatever local "status" we might dub them with.
So it comes down to the next question:
2. How can you tell when people have done their homework?
JA: Here we are talking about (1) procedures for solving
the actual problems that reality throws at us, and
(2) procedures for solving the associated problems
that arise in discussions among communities of
people who have radically diverse viewpoints
with respect to the nature and implications
for action of the initial problems, up to
and including whether problems of these
descriptions really exist.
JA: From my perspective, there is already a method for converging on
a state of congruence with both our society and our reality, and
that is known as the method of scientific inquiry, as exemplified
by all of the ways that problems are actually solved and phenomena
are really explained in the research endeavors of all our various
communities of inquiry. So I am reluctant to settle for anything
that is proposed to serve as a second-rate substitute for that.
MW: I have no objection to scientific enquiry, and I think
the Quality Process that is at the heart of what I am
proposing is quite compatible with it. It just provides
a little structure which amongst other things would mean
that you knew where you were.
JA: We all have good intenstions at heart. We set up procedures that are
hopefully designed to actualize our intentions and maintain all sorts
of setpoints withing the domains of our essential operating variables.
I worry about the thermostat. Has it been designed, hopefully or not
so hopefully, to inform us when this control system is out of control?
By what measures should we recognize that the idiot lights are rather
more idiotic than is nominally acceptable? These are real questions
of design-to-task and design-for-testing.
MW: It is out of control, or not controlling at least,
when there are large numbers of issues that are
rejected.
Yes, that's one clue.
JA: Furthermore, I do not how any such work programme can be rendered
enforceable among people who do not already see the need of it,
except by means of coercion of various sorts, the main problem
here being that, once the power of coercion toward assent is
instituted, it almost always ends up being abused in ways
that corrupt the good ends intended.
MW: It can't of course be enforced. The best we get is whatwe deserve.
If people work and operate this process diligently I have seen it
produce great results, when people try to cheat the process for
the illusion of progress, I have seen poor results. It is not
a silver bullet.
JA: I think that we deserve better than we are currently getting.
How do we address the gap between the suopper and the desert?
MW: The best safeguard it contains is the occassional formal votes
amongst peers. If people take their obligations for the votes
seriously, then progress should only be allowed when supported
by evidence.
JA: The safety of this safeguard, and whether what should be will be,
depends on how well informed are those who vote on the questions.
MW: It would be helpful if at least people
understood what they did not know.
In my experience, it takes work to understand the things
that I wasn't born knowing about, and it takes work to
understand the things that I was born knowing about.
JA: How would your work programme facilitate that?
MW: No magic here. I know no cure for human frailty.
I did not say "magic". I am a little too old for that.
I did not even say "guarantee". Too old for that, too.
When we finally blazon the IEEE logo on SUO, somewhere in
the 24th Century, they'll probably want a limited warranty.
So I have to stress: How will your design "facilitate" that.
Look, Matthew, these are not academic or rhetorical questions.
Here in the US we are agonizingly working our way through the
aftermath of the Columbia disaster, the aftermath of which is
astoundingly like the aftermath of the Challenger disaster.
And all the after-the-math commission reports point to
a culture of institutionalized ignoramming of what all
the techies were telling all the de-tachees all along.
The question is, when are the organizational systems
that "enculturate" people this way going to wake up
and do the pre-math, so we don't have to keep doing
the aftermath? That is the question. Call it #3.
But it really should have been #1.
Jon Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o