Saturday, January 22, 2005

Computers Are Our Friends, Usually

This article in the New York Times this morning struck a cord: 
Does Not Compute  
By Nicholas G. Carr
Carlisle, Mass. — The Federal Bureau of Investigation has officially entered what computer professionals call "software hell." After spending $170 million to create a program that would give agents ready access to information on suspected terrorists, the bureau admitted last week that it's not even close to having a working system. In fact, it may have to start from scratch. 
Shocking? Not at all. 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.

Consider Ford Motor Company's ambitious effort to write new software for buying supplies. Begun in 2000, the goal of the project, code-named Everest, was to replace Ford's patchwork of internal purchasing systems with a uniform system that would run over the Internet. The new software was supposed to reduce paperwork, speed orders and slash costs. But the effort sank under its own complexity. When it was rolled out for testing in North America, suppliers rebelled; according to Automotive News, many found the new software to be slower and more cumbersome than the programs it was intended to replace. Last August, Ford abandoned Everest amid reports that the project was as much as $200 million over budget.

A McDonald's program called Innovate was even more ambitious - and expensive. Started in 1999 with a budget of $1 billion, the network sought to automate pretty much the entire fast-food empire. Software systems would collect information from every restaurant - the number of burgers sold, the speed of customer service, even the temperature of the oil in the French fry vats - and deliver it in a neat bundle to the company's executives, who would be able to adjust operations moment by moment.

Or so it was promised. Despite the grand goals, the project went nowhere. In late 2002, McDonald's killed it, writing off the $170 million that had already been spent. 
I had the good fortune of working for a company several years ago the corporate leadership of which decided that it needed to keep up with the competition and in so doing, allocated $1 billion to a computer system transformation. What the company ended up with several years later can best be described as a complete mess. An impressive mess but a mess just the same. The new system was slower, more complex, and less user-friendly. It required that the company maintain 700 programmers on their employ. The mainframe people within the headquarters building couldn't
communicate with the PC people. In some cases, mainframe people couldn't communicate with each other. As time went on, upgrades and patches were added, brought in by different providers, some of whose consultants didn't speak English. And we all prayed that, when we had need of a programming change, that someone was still with the company that knew something about the original code. 

And we talked in terms of "man-months" to get a change made. "You want me to alter a field in this report? I can do it. It will take nine man-months." The most frustrating moment I remember in this regard was on a day when I asked a senior programming department head for some rather major changes. I laid out for her what I needed, in great detail. She took it all in, asked a few questions, took lots of notes and told me, without expression , it will take five years to accomplish. What?!!!

"Never mind. We'll make do."

Believe it or not, developing our corporate computer system was not our core business. We actually sold stuff to customers. 
Research by the Standish Group, a software research and consulting firm, illustrates the troubled fates of most big software initiatives. In 1994, researchers found, only 16 percent were completed on time, on budget and fulfilling the original specifications. Nearly a third were canceled outright, and the remainder fell short of their objectives. More than half of the cost overruns amounted to at least 50 percent of the original budget. Of the projects that went off schedule, almost half took more than twice as long as originally planned. A follow-up survey in 2003, however, showed that corporate software projects were doing better; researchers found that the percentage of successful projects had risen to 34 percent.
We learned it the hard way. Such wasted effort. And scarce resources.

But I learned from that experience. A few years later, I was working for a different company and was asked by senior management to take over a troubled department. Morale was poor. Training was substandard. We had your standard personnel issues relating to productivity, discipline, absenteeism, and motivation - or lack thereof. 

And the computer program in use was unsatisfactory. It was purchased from a development firm that came in and designed it for us, at great expense. The company provided consultants and a help desk should we have need, and the software was sophisticated enough to put a man on Mars. I remember too that the company allowed as many users to log onto the system, after we paid - for each one of our employees - $10,000 per year in the way of a license fee.

The problem was, the software was so complex that only one person in the department could run reports from this monster. We had apparently sent her off at great expense to learn its intricacies. Everyone else would input data (it was a multi-user networked system) but only one woman, who would close her office door and work her magic in secret, could actually get this elaborate system to provide us with any meaningful information. Naturally, we had to accept this woman's peculiarities and workplace demands. Without her, we were doomed.

Worse yet, I realized, having sat down with one of these consultants for several precious days, that we were only utilizing about 5% of this software's capabilities. It had functionality that we had absolutely no need of.

So I scrapped it. 

I went out and bought a new program. Off the shelf. Actually manufactured by Microsoft. No consultants. Inexpensive to use. Easy to operate. It integrated perfectly with Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. It allowed for multiple users to input data simultaneously. We generated meaningful and sophisticated reports with it. And anyone could learn to configure the software to spit out whatever data we felt we needed. It worked. It was sufficient. Not being our core business, it allowed us to free up funds for our core business - selling stuff.
What happened between 1994 and 2003? The Internet boom went bust. Stung by wasted investments in complicated software systems, business executives began taking a more skeptical view of such projects. They scaled back their expectations, pursuing more modest software enhancements with narrower goals - and far higher chances of success.  
Equally important, they stopped trying to be creative. Rather than try to customize their software, they began looking for cheaper, off-the-shelf programs that would get the job done with a minimum of fuss. When necessary, they changed their own procedures to fit the available software. Old, generic technology may not be glamorous, but it has an important advantage: it works. 
It may well turn out that the F.B.I.'s biggest problem was its desire to be innovative - to build a new wheel rather than use an old one within easy reach. When it comes to developing software today, innovation should be a last resort, not a first instinct.
I prefer to think of it as graduating from "the school of hard knocks."

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Treasures In The Attic

If I could choose my career all over again (and didn't have to worry about making a living), I'd be an attic explorer. Barrymore Laurence Scherer (in the Wall Street Journal) got to experience the excitement recently:

Waxing Nostalgic About Early Recordings
In an old attic, I find a treasure trove for a music lover.

Recently, while looking through an old house for sale in our neighborhood, I came upon a pile of 78s in the attic. (Note to those who regard even vinyl LPs as antiques: 78 rpm shellac discs were the recording-industry standard before 1950.) I mentioned my interest to the owner, who was delighted that the records would have a good home. They had been her grandmother's, and when I came by to remove them, I discovered that the single pile was only the tip of the iceberg. There were several hundred in all. Bliss! 
Paula had two great-aunts a number of years ago who lived all their lives in a small home overlooking the Ohio River in southern Indiana. They were, in their final years, wheelchair bound and, as it happened, died at about the same point in time. In their will, they had decided to leave their home to a neighbor and their belongings to be divided among the closest relatives, including my mother-in-law. 

Paula and I were asked to travel with her mother to the old home to collect those items of value that had been designated for her to have; the remainder of the belongings - clothing, appliances, etc., were to be given to charity. So we made the journey to Aunt Corrine's house, and when we entered, stepped back in time.

The old home was in great need of repair. The two old ladies had lived alone for many years and were unable, both physically and financially, to keep the home in reasonable condition; the roof needed replacing, the siding hadn't had a new coat of paint in years, and all the windows needed to be recaulked. But the interior of the small frame house was of great value; a treasure trove of antiques. Upon entering I was immediately drawn to an old ice box. For those of you too young to know what an ice box is - or was - it was used in the days before electricity was available in the home to keep food cold. One literally put blocks of ice in it on a regular basis, thus the name ice box. You may still hear some old folks refer to their refrigerator as an icebox.

The source for water in the house was a well standard - or hand pump. Someone at some point in time in the past had installed a sink in the kitchen area but water lines had never been run to it so a small hand pump was mounted next to the sink and the old ladies pumped water whenever they wanted to do dishes or make coffee or simply to get a drink of well water.

Facing the well standard in the kitchen was an old pie safe. Those of you who have some understanding of antiques will recognize the name as being an upright cupboard, this one having the classic tin door panels with the pinhole scrollwork on each. I had this pie safe dated by an expert some time later (this was the only piece that Paula and I took) and he estimated it was from the 1880's.

The other furniture in the home was as old. Most of it was, in that early American sort of way, simple, functional, and built to last forever. Unlike the particleboard or veneer furniture you so often find today.

While there I came across the drawers of letters and memorabilia that the two old ladies had accumulated over the years. Being the amateur historian, I took time out to inspect some of it. Aunt Corrine had kept everything, including old newspapers and magazines. I remember she had a small box half the size of a shoe box that contained tiny remnants of thread; the purpose for which I haven't a clue. But there were also a number of items a museum would probably love to have. I saw maps of Indiana from the days before there were interstate highways (dated as far back as 1920). The old ladies had kept their ration stamps from the World War II era. They were still (this would have been about 1988) entitled to purchase - by U.S. government authority - a set of tires and a ration of sugar. And a pair of shoes. Thier ration book still contained stamps for each. From a time long forgotten when all of this country's resources were devoted to fighting a war on the Nazis and Japanese.

They had filed receipts for the sale of tobacco in the 50's. And for the purchase of a battery for a tractor long gone. And there were the flyers from their local church going back decades. They seemed to love their church. They even kept newspaper clippings of weddings of people who are, in their own right, probably elderly today. And who hopefully have fond memories of these two women who are already forgotten by all but a relatively few old souls.

And of course there were the personal letters. That strangers like me should never be allowed to see. They were to be destroyed, whether right or wrong.

Such memories.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Blue vs Gray Ground Zero

For those of you who enjoy researching - or reliving - the Civil War, you will be envious when I tell you I am at ground zero tonight - Fredericksburg, Virginia. In fact I drove through (or near) most of the famous sites of the 1861 to 1864 conflict - names the rest of you should know if you were paying attention in US history class. Appomattox, Petersburg, Spotsylvania. And Richmond. And I went past several battlefield sites the names of which only the aficionado will recognize - High Bridge, Saylor's Creek, Five Forks, Drewry's Bluff.

Unfortunately if you exalt the past, you'll hate the present. I rolled into Fredericksburg at about 6:30 and was rather surprised to find traffic on southbound I-95 crawling along. Believe it or not, it is from the evening rush of commuters trying to get home - from Washington D.C. This is how far they drive these days in order to escape the big city. I'm not sure but D.C. must be 50 miles up the highway. 

What that means for this area is that there is tremendous growth. Which puts considerable pressure on battlefield preservationists to save what they can of a vanishing topography. There is, I'm told, a large tract of land just west of my hotel that was a key part of the landscape in Stonewall Jackson's legendary march around the Union army in May, 1862 that resulted in the destruction of one wing of that army and provided Robert E Lee with what proved to be his most spectacular victory of the war. Today it is a large residential development. With high-end homes.

I guess the moral of this story is this: If you intend to travel to Fredericksburg, Virginia in order to take in those legendary sites like the "muleshoe" at Spotsylvania, or the stone wall or Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg, or Todd's Tavern at the Wilderness, or the Chancellor House at Chancellorsville, you'd better hurry. Either that or anticipate seeing a Denny's where the Irish Brigade met its fate.

Friday, January 07, 2005

Come Visit The Inner Harbor

I spent a relaxing evening down in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore last night. Even though we are in the dead of winter, it was a wonderful Spring-like evening, allowing me to stroll down and see the old navy ship, "USS Constellation" and to partake of the most delicious cajun crab cakes at Phillips' (you have to order crab cakes when you go to Baltimore; it's the law.) For those of you looking for a spectacular place to visit on vacation, come on up to Baltimore. It provides for great entertainment and lasting memories.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

The Language Barrier

I rolled into Manassas, Virginia this evening and decided the first thing I needed to do was satisfy my addiction to Chinese food. I'm not overly familiar with the area but I knew where all the retail stores were and I also knew that in one of the strip centers here there would be a Chinese resaurant. There always is. I prefer the small carryout shop as opposed to the big Chinese buffets because I have this strange inability to stop eating the stuff. If a buffet table has twelve kinds of chicken (General Tsao's, Honey, Barbecue, Sesame, etc.), I will go for all twelve. It is an awful thing to watch.

Well, this evening I ran into a dilemma. It had to do with the language barrier. I pulled up to this small restaurant that had the name "Rho Nguyen" on the facade of the building. Hmm. I looked closely at the door and windows to see the familiar "Chinese Carryout," or "Chinese Quisine," or something. Nothing. So is Rho Nguyen Chinese?

The thought went through my mind of an incident several years ago in Chicago. I walked into a restaurant thinking that it was Chinese. It was Philipino. I accepted my error and asked for a menu. Twenty minutes later, I'm still trying to figure out what phanduong pot is. My creative mind was racing. I ended up ordering something that looked like beef and hoped for the best.

I had a similar incident in El Paso about five years ago. I was travelling there regularly and, because I was focused on a business project, I had made no attempt to get out at night and take part in the local quisine. A friend was shocked when I told him I had never tasted the Mexican food the whole time I was there in El Paso. It was suggested that what I needed to do was to walk across the Rio Grande into Juarez and try the food there. I had no burning desire to get my head handed to me over there so I made the decision to go out one night and find some honest-to-God Mexican food - on the El Paso side of the river.

I drove around for a while, looking at several restaurants but each one made me feel like, when I entered, I'd be the only gringo in the place and that nobody would be able to speak English. So I ended up at Taco Bell. Excellent Mexican by the way.

So this evening I had to decide if I was going to try "Rho Nguyen." As I was starting to enter, something came to mind - the name of the last president of South Vietnam before it surrendered to the North Vietnamese in 1975 (I know. I'm the only remaining person on earth who knows who that was. I was always great at Jeopardy.) His name was Nguyen Van Thieu.

Nguyen.

This was a Vietnamese restaurant. And Vietnamese would not satisfy my craving -- at least I don't think it would. Besides I hear they eat dogs over there. So I got back in my car and found the "Chinese Palace." Yes. Oh, yes.

I sit here now, two hours later, completely bloated and uncomfortable. But at least I don't have to worry about some dog having bought the farm at my expense. As it turned out, it was only a chicken. A very tasty one to be sure.