Author: The Information Badger

Commemorating the end of the 1914-18 Great War has, rightly, been one of the key themes in of the last week. The Badger found Remembrance Services and silence at the 11th Hour on the 11th day of the 11th month 100 years after the end of the war poignant, sobering and thought provoking. A relative of the Badger served in the army throughout. He won the Military Medal and survived, but it’s difficult to imagine the harrowing carnage he encountered during the war and his difficulties in civilian life afterwards. After all, the Great War was a real turning point for the world. Empires unravelled, the world order changed, and social, political and class structures changed forever, and economic hardship was commonplace.

In the run up to the Great War political, social, economic, military and technological factors drove widespread propaganda. Today’s internet-driven world has the potential for similar dynamics, and so the Badger was intrigued last week when Sir Tim Berners-Lee – father of the World Wide Web – launched a campaign to establish a kind of Magna-Carta to defend a free and open internet. The initiative appears to be driven by worries about the abuse of personal data, political manipulation, extremism and the power of a few major tech groups. Opinions seem to vary about Sir Tim’s campaign, and one published in the Register caused the Badger to wonder if Sir Tim’s campaign would it be a game changer and a defining moment in today’s tech-driven world, or just a distraction.

The Badger’s thoughts ranged from the idealistic with a Magna Carta seeding a turning point in the tech-driven world (like the Great War but without the human carnage), to replaying thoughts in a previous blog item, and to the revolutionary where big business’s internet domination and desire to grab, manipulate, and keep your attention for commercial gain is demolished. The Badger concluded simply that the genie has been out of the bottle for years and that Sir Tim’s initiative is unlikely to change the dominant power of big business. A Magna Carta of principles without real teeth and the full force of international law won’t put the genie back in the bottle even if big business smiles sweetly and supports it.

Sorry Sir Tim. Many in the general public will support your desire for something to be done, but not perhaps in the way you’re suggesting. The Badger feels that if, as predicted, 50% of the world population will be online by early 2019, then the internet is surely part of ‘the world’s critical infrastructure’. It will therefore need something stronger than your proposed ‘Magna Carta’ to protect everyone’s interests!

IT services companies quoted on stock exchanges publish their financial results quarterly and at the end of their financial year. Results are normally published with copious supporting notes and narratives, and are complemented by presentations, conference calls, and webcasts for stakeholders, analysts and anyone interested in the company’s performance. There are also normally internal presentations to the company’s staff to cascade the results and key messages across the organisation. There’s nothing unusual or sinister in any of this, but it’s often the case that positives are accentuated, and negatives get less air time.

Every employee is interested in their company’s performance, at least in the Badger’s experience. But employees are often suspicious of the results presented because they seem at odds with what they subjectively ‘feel and sense‘ on a day to day basis. Not every employee is a financial expert or has the time to understand and interpret the jargon, meaning and intricacies of published financial results, so is there a very simple way to get a quick, macro feel for how the company is doing?

Well, yes! Simply divide the reported orders, revenue and profit numbers by the company’s total number of employees. (Some companies publish headcount in their reported results, but for those that don’t it can often be found on their website, company overviews, press releases or marketing material). Simply track how these three ‘per employee’ numbers change quarter by quarter and year by year to get a broad sense of performance devoid of any propaganda. In simple terms, a material upward trend in the numbers suggests a healthy, efficient and growing company that will provide good career opportunities for employees. Flat or declining trends suggest stagnancy, little career development opportunity for employees, and the likelihood of a strategic overhaul at some stage to address these adverse trends. The latter often leads to workforce restructuring and loss of jobs.

Anyone can do the above. It’s simple, and whilst financial purists may assert otherwise, the Badger has found it a reliable way for anyone to keep grounded on how well an IT services company is doing. Why not have a go yourself? Comparing the trend of these three numbers for your company with those of your competitors can be a real eye opener!

Last Sunday the Badger bumped into neighbours out for a walk with their two young daughters. They are both teachers and their daughters are just 8 and 6 years old. The eldest was clutching a pink tablet, not quite the size of an iPad. We chatted for some minutes, and the 8-year old – obviously feeling a bit left out –  thrust her tablet into the Badger’s hands and said ‘look what I’ve got’.  The Badger asked what she used it for, and she said mainly for drawing pictures and playing games. Her mother teaches humanity subjects at school, so the Badger casually commented to her parents that their daughter  was already on track for a career in the arts rather than science and engineering. The conversation then took an unexpected turn.

The little girl asked the Badger what was best; arts or science and engineering? The Badger was momentarily surprised, but answered saying that he’d trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) subjects, and had used that training in the IT world to successfully do many varied technical and non-technical things. The Badger illustrated – in child-friendly terms – by mentioning satellites, navigation, space travel, mobile phones and iPads. She was also told that it was scientists and engineers that made the apps on her tablet and, indeed, made the modern world work! The Badger pointed out that scientists and engineers were very creative and often drew pictures on their tablets too!

The little girl absorbed this for a moment, looked quizzically at her mother and asked her if she should be an artist, or a scientist or engineer when she grew up. Her mother just grinned and turned the question back on her daughter. What did she want to be? None of us were prepared for the answer. With a serious expression she quickly said she wanted to be a scientist or an engineer. Her mother asked why? Her daughter looked sheepish, and giggled. She just said because that way she could learn to control Santa Clause’s delivery of presents around the world at Christmas, and divert all the presents to herself! Her mother was horrified.

After the neighbours resumed their walk, the Badger was left with just two thoughts. The first was that young children like hearing about the role of science and engineering in the modern world. The second was that this little girl will go far in life! Just imagine how she’ll be thinking when she’s 18 years old rather than 8…

Outsource contracts include service levels and key performance indicators (KPIs) together with how they are calculated and reported and what penalties arise for non-achievement. This means that when the service is running the client, supplier line management and the supplier service delivery team can all see what’s working and what isn’t. This focuses everyone’s attention on areas of underperformance and enables the success of corrective action to be tracked through the return of indicators to the required level. This neatly illustrates the well-known adage that ‘What gets measured gets done…’.

This saying has been around for a very long time, so the Badger was surprised to overhear a conversation recently where a smartly dressed lady was quizzing a man about the status of a software development project in a London Starbucks. The lady asked about the status of development and the man replied that it was ‘Amber’. The lady went on to ask exactly how much of the software was developed, how much had been tested, and whether progress was on track. The man shrugged and just restated it was Amber. The lady looked anxious and sensibly asked how he knew it was Amber. The man shrugged his shoulders again and said that it was the general sentiment of his team. The lady looked unhappy and just said, ‘You obviously don’t have any facts, so this sounds very Red to me’. They left shortly afterwards.

The Badger almost choked on his latte wondering why he was hearing this conversation in 2018. The Badger first heard conversations like this more than three decades ago when it was already known that quantitative metrics and measurement were crucial to control in any software or systems development lifecycle. Over the years the Badger has seen many software and systems integration projects that became major situations when quantitative management, engineering and test measurements were absent. Turning these situations around not only always entailed putting quantification, metrics and measurement in place, but also then aligning people to get things done based on analysis of the associated outputs.

Although the world today is very different to that of a couple of decades ago, the maxim which is the title of this post remains totally relevant and is imperative knowledge for anyone in a leadership or management role. Surely in 2018 we shouldn’t be having to re-learn the lessons of old on software-centric projects? Perhaps we do. At the very least it seems necessary to continually and better communicate and educate so that such basics are routinely cemented in individual learning. So, the Badger’s plea of the week is simply this; remember, if it isn’t being measured then it won’t get done – and that goes for software/systems projects just as well as service deliveries. Pass it on!

Do you remember the Pink Panther movies starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling and hilarious Inspector Clouseau? Hopefully you do, but if not You Tube will help. Inspector Clouseau is a wonderful movie character magnificently brought to life by a great comic actor. The Inspector is, of course, just that; a character in movies from an age (the 1970s) when the technology we take for granted today was absent from most people’s lives. However, recent events suggest to the Badger that one or more Inspector Clouseaus may have materialised in the real world!

Recent events that exposed the Salisbury nerve agent culprits, the catching of foreign parties red handed trying to hack the OPCW, the disappearance of a Saudi national from a consulate in Turkey, and the quiet disappearance of the Head of Interpol on a trip to China, have all shown the power of modern information technology in bringing matters to public attention that perpetrators might otherwise prefer to keep quiet. The alleged perpetrators are now working through the handling of their embarrassments on the world stage, but the thuggery that’s been exposed is shocking for most normal people and just underlines danger that pervades modern times. The alleged perpetrators appear to be from organisations fully aware of the power and use of modern technology, and yet their operations appear to have been conducted oblivious to how the technology at their target site could speedily put them on the defensive and open to ridicule in the aftermath!

That’s why the Badger wonders if Inspector Clouseaus have materialised in the real world. Surely, a Clouseau must have been involved in whatever planning of these operations took place? If technology savvy perpetrators can be so obviously on the back foot when challenged with technology-based evidence from media investigators, then Clouseau-like bungling seems a higher than average probability!

What the Badger finds particularly disquieting is the thought that Clouseaus could soon wield tools categorised as ‘weaponised Artificial Intelligence’. If that happens it should fill us all with dread, especially given the backdrop of recent events. The topic of Weaponised Artificial Intelligence – in its very broadest sense – could turn out to be the next ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’, and so should get more public profile than it does.

There’s no doubt that we live in times of rapid, global, political, social, governmental policy and technological change and upheaval. The Badger concludes, rather sanguinely given it’s grey and raining outside, that we all face two big challenges. The first is controlling the tyrannical tendencies and egos of global leaders, and the second is ensuring Inspector Clouseau remains just a character in the movies! Unsurprisingly there doesn’t seem to be much progress on either of these so far…

A friend’s car displays an unexpected warning light on some journeys. There’s no degradation in performance and visits to the dealer to replace sensors hasn’t fixed the problem. The dealer now thinks it’s a software fault requiring a fix from the manufacturer, but there’s no timeline for this. Instead the dealer now just presses a ‘reset’ button every time it happens. The Badger’s friend is unhappy because she wants to sell the car. She’s complained to the manufacturer about their inadequate software testing! Hmm. Let’s see what happens.

The Badger’s reminded of many projects where poor testing led to client disappointment and significantly higher costs for the supplier. Testing was often the poor relation to sexier software design/development activity, and it was often squeezed by development overruns and commercial pressure to get paid on time. The Badger fondly remembers a related experience from his formative years.

The Design Authority (DA) for a major project the young Badger was working on was summoned by the Managing Director (MD) to explain why the number of defects found in testing was continually rising, and what action was underway to reduce this so a large payment milestone could be secured on time. The Badger and others attended the meeting that ensued to support the DA. The MD was aggressive and demanded the financial milestone be met. He believed the testers were being too picky and threatened to install a new test team if things didn’t improve. The Design Authority was unintimidated. He merely stated that there were 1 million lines of code being tested and that ‘there are as many paths through that code as there are stars in the universe’. He then asked the MD how many defects the team should expect to find in testing, and how the MD would judge that enough testing had been done? The MD was flummoxed. The Design Authority then just got up and left! The Badger and others were flummoxed too!

Testing continued. The milestone moved right, and the software benefited from the delay. The client was ultimately delighted with the final deliverable and the MD apologised to the team for his misplaced attempt to pressurise testing for purely monetary reasons. He admitted that the delay had cost the company much less than delivering something on time of questionable quality and robustness. This left two impressions on the Badger. Never skimp on testing, and good leaders and know when an apology is needed and have the sense to do so.

Today software and data run everything. Thorough testing is imperative especially when security, privacy and safety is relevant to every system we use. End users expect software to be robust, reliable and secure. So, let’s hear it for career testers! They’ve been the poor relation to software developers for far too long…

Over the last week or so Facebook announced a security vulnerability that exposed the data of 50 million users, the UK Conservative Party’s conference app proved embarrassingly insecure, and a few big banks – notably RBS, HSBC and TSB – experienced glitches with online or mobile banking. Lots of media chatter ensued, as is the norm, but the Badger just sighed! Individuals somewhere, in whatever organisation, would ultimately get the blame, and those people would probably be IT techies, engineers, or technically biased managers. At least that was the Badger’s first thought. Subsequent thoughts were more philosophical. Why don’t IT techies and engineers, who work exceptionally hard to make our daily lives function, get the recognition they deserve, and why is it that we tend to hear more blame-oriented comment when difficulties arise than praise when good things happen?

The Badger mused on this over a cup of strong coffee in the autumn sunshine but came to no conclusions. Then, completely by chance while browsing different subject matter relevant to the Badger’s non-IT engineering roots, the wise words of Professor Eann Patterson, a Professor at the UK’s University of Liverpool, hit the spot! The Badger isn’t repeating the Professor’s words here because you can read two of his short blog entries for yourself at ‘Making things happen’ and ‘Happenstance, not engineering’. As with much in human society, it seems that it’s the way our brains are wired that explains why we blame more than we praise. Just a few sentences in the Professor’s ‘Happenstance, not engineering’ blog entry explains this very simply.

The Badger feels we should all be aware of this unconscious bias and that we should therefore adapt our behaviours appropriately. The Badger also feels that those in leadership roles should reinforce efforts to ensure that a more positive recognition of the techies, engineers and managers in the IT industry appears in the mass media. After all, it’s our IT techies, engineers and managers that make modern society and the fabric of daily life work. Attracting a steady stream of new technical and engineering talent – people with a Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) background – into diverse IT careers is essential if the functioning of modern society is to continue reliably. When the Badger joined the IT industry, technical and engineering skills were highly valued. Is that the case today? You’ll no doubt have your own view on the answer. The Badger, however, thinks it is time for a ‘resurgence of the techie’ and for more recognition of the hard work techies do behind the scenes to keep the fabric of daily life working.

The Badger cleared a spare room recently and found a long-forgotten Toshiba laptop hiding in the back of a cupboard. Well, it’s called a laptop but it’s more of a ‘transportable’ given its size and weight – perhaps not surprising given the Badger first used it in 1994. Does it still work? Yes. The Badger applied power after doing some checks and surprisingly it started up (slowly) with its built-in 50MB hard-drive screeching unnervingly like a banshee.

The installed Mosaic browser reminded the Badger just how much has changed since the ability to access the internet started arriving on computers in the 1990s. The Badger used Mosaic (and subsequently Netscape) as the standard tool for finding information and knowledge on the internet in those days. Since then, of course, computer, communication and information technology has developed exponentially, and accessing information and knowledge using your choice of modern browser is instantaneous today from any device.

So that’s a good thing isn’t it? Yes. But whereas in the 1990s your browser returned information essentially based only on its search algorithm and the question you asked, today’s returns are additionally influenced by ‘business’ and the desire to grab, manipulate, and keep your attention. Indeed, in an interview on the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme recently an ex-Google executive confirmed that today’s digital world is totally focused on this very point. Grabbing and manipulating your attention is apparently the design criterion for creators of today’s apps and platforms. It’s a shame, but these days the giants of social media and the internet know more about you than you know about yourself. That wasn’t the case in 1994!

So what else did finding the old Toshiba remind the Badger of? Two things. Firstly, the speed and impact of change in the IT industry and the world driven by technological advances. The Badger finds it sobering to remember that 25 years ago mobile phones were not widespread, desk top computers and laptops were cumbersome, slow, and had low storage capacity, mobile networks provided voice and SMS, public and work access to the internet was only just blossoming, and social media platforms didn’t exist! ‘Digital Transformation’ is one of today’s hot buzz phrases, but in truth digital transformation has been underway for at least the last 25 years.

Secondly, if you enter the workforce today then the way you currently live and work will change dramatically by the time you are 40 years old. Change driven by technology doesn’t stop then! When you get to 40 and look forward, you’ll realise there’ll be many further changes to the way you live and work before you take your pension. By then you’ll also probably be hoping that Buzz Lightyear and the robots will have taken us all ‘to infinity and beyond…’

British Airways (BA) made headlines recently when it announced that the credit card details of ~380,000 customers were stolen in an attack on its website and app. The company’s share price dropped 2% and the event was a reminder that no organisation, regardless of size or sophistication, is immune to such attacks. Cybersecurity has a high profile. But what is it? The Badger playfully asked friends recently. Many said that it’s anti-virus software, firewalls, encryption, two-factor authentication, software patches, and so on. The Badger, however, learned some years back that it’s much more than this.

The Badger once oversaw a company security department and was tasked to expand the profile and impact of its activities. The department’s staff were expert, hardworking and very professional but they were seen as administrators by others. The Badger learned lots very quickly. Especially that cybersecurity is really the convergence of people, governance, processes and technology into a multi-layered framework to protect an organisation, people, networks and business systems from malicious digital attacks.

The Badger and the department staff set about improving and communicating such a layered framework to have a bigger impact. Anti-virus, firewalls, encryption, passwords and two-factor authentication, and routine software patching were just part of this holistic bigger picture. Progress was helped by executive realisation that new privacy laws were on their way (e.g. GDPR), and that they needed to have good overall security governance, incident, public relations and media management in place to address stakeholder and customer anxieties. Executives had learned from some very public mishandlings of events by other companies! All suggested improvements were approved and fully implemented. Similar things happened in other organisations industry-wide, and today Chief Security or Chief Information Security Officers (CSO/CISO) are the focal points for overall security governance, policies, processes, and practices, including threat detection and defensive measures.

BA seem to have handled the public aspects of their event reasonably well, which implies robustness in their overall security and incident handling framework. However, one thing’s certain. More of such attacks are inevitable. Why? Because people, often very innovative and creative ones, are involved in this delinquency. The Badger learned lots from overseeing a security department. The department lead, a person with decades of security experience, insisted that ‘People are always the weakest link in security’ and the Badger saw this proved many times. Even the most up-standing people can resort to maliciousness or criminality and become a threat when impacted by adverse life, personal or work events.

So, if you’ve read this far then just remember that firewalls, virus software, encryption and so on have their place, but when it comes to real security, you are the weakest link!

Change driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickening and the number of words written about AI – what it is, the technology, impact on economies, politics, democracy, jobs, life etc – expands hour by hour. This piece contributes to the expansion!
A conversation with a neighbour while washing the car morphed into an interesting debate about the future. It touched on AI and its role in driving productivity improvement in companies, particularly large ones. The neighbour thinks AI is just as much a challenge for IT consultancies, systems integrators and outsourcers as it is for companies in other industries. He believes AI will drive significant IT job losses and perhaps an IT sector decline like that experienced in various manufacturing and heavy industries in developed countries in the last decades of the 20th century. The debate didn’t dwell on this, but the Badger has since pondered on a) whether companies in the IT sector are really changing because of AI, and b) if they are, then how can you tell? Today’s blog item was born!

General sentiment, after some research, seems to be that AI will impact many IT administrative jobs, jobs in company finance and legal functions, and front-line support, call centre and help-desk jobs. Some believe that IT infrastructure and application support jobs may ultimately be replaced by machine intelligence and the automatic identification and repair of problems before they occur. If you work in a large IT consultancy, SI or outsourcer in these roles then things look likely to change! Other IT roles appear less at risk provided skills are kept current and relevant. Small companies with good, modern architecture products who can adapt them quickly for AI will be exciting places to work, while bigger companies with legacy products who are not as fleet of foot need to work hard to avoid being left behind.

So, what did the Badger concluded regarding a) and b) above? Regarding a) IT companies often communicate their approach and offerings to meet market trends but say little about the adoption of AI for their own operations. On b), the Badger thinks a company’s profit per employee over time is a useful macro indicator. AI drives productivity improvement so this metric should rise over time. Exploring the metric on a sample of 2016 and 2017 company results implies broadly flat productivity to date, so let’s see what happens to it as AI bites over the next few years.

Are IT sector companies changing due to AI? Perhaps some, but very slowly. The Badger’s neighbour thinks Amazon and Google will ultimately dominate AI technology and the IT services sector with major acquisitions. The Badger hopes he’s wrong…but stranger things have happened.