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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.

A friend’s son, who starts employment this week after graduating recently from University, asked this question. The youngster – full of enthusiasm, hungry to succeed and keen to pay off his student loan – wants to move up the career ladder swiftly. The Badger considered many possible answers, but after brief reflection one simple answer stood out, namely ‘Learn how and when to say No!’. The youngster was intrigued and wanted to know what underpinned the answer. The Badger thus described a material event from his own experience.

A senior business leader, one of the Badger’s bosses in a matrixed organisation, was summoned by a client to explain considerable underperformance on a contract. The Badger had drawn attention to this for some time, but the leader had taken no action. The meeting with the client was arranged for the first day of a long-scheduled Badger Summer vacation. The Badger was not material to the contract, but the leader insisted the Badger attend regardless. The Badger didn’t like attending whilst on vacation but felt obliged when adverse comments about loyalty and career progression featured in the leader’s communications.

On the day of the meeting, the leader arranged to meet an hour before the client session to confirm messaging and tactics. Instead the leader used this pre-meeting to unfairly berate and blame the Badger for the whole situation. The Badger was taken aback. The leader’s words were like facing into the full force of a hair dryer! To say the Badger was annoyed is an understatement. The subsequent client meeting, however, was benign, straightforward, and constructive, and the Badger sat there wondering why he was attending on a vacation day.

On the way home afterwards, the Badger decided to ‘Learn how and when to say No!’ better. Since then the Badger said No – and meant it – in many situations to great effect. Did it damage the Badger’s career? No. Was the Badger’s loyalty ever questioned when saying No? No. Did the Badger become disrespected or a ‘negative’ person? No. The pressure described above from some leaders are not unusual but never be afraid of the consequences of saying No. If there are consequences, then question your enterprise’s real values and whether you’re in the right organisation. So, what happened after the client meeting? Issues were resolved, and the senior business leader left their post a few months later.

The youngster said he would not forget the seven-word answer to his question, and the Badger believed him! What would your answer to the question be?

Risk pervades life. We take risks every day; for example, when crossing a road or driving a car. The companies we work for take risks. In fact, they thrive by taking risks and successfully mitigating and managing the consequences. Indeed, large companies usually have mature enterprise-level risk management regimes – see some nuggets here – and employees leading the build, test and delivery of technology-intensive systems normally have instinctive risk management characteristics underpinning their career success. The Badger’s delivery experience has emphasised that while formal risk management processes and controls are important, it’s always the people – project, programme, service and business leaders – that must ultimately decide on what risk to take. After all, it’s people at the end of the day who are responsible for the outcomes of their decisions and pay the price for getting it wrong. Today’s predictable departure of the TSB Bank CEO for a botched migration to a new IT system illustrates the point.

Why has the Badger been thinking about risk? Because the news that an Apple ‘driver-less’ vehicle was rear-ended by another vehicle while waiting for a safe gap to join a freeway in California reinforced the Badger’s belief that a human rather than a computer system must decide on whether to take a risk or not.

‘Driver-less’ vehicle technology is advanced, and – if you believe the hype – there’ll be millions of such vehicles on roads within ten years. Big auto and tech companies apparently have up to ~100 vehicles each currently under test on public roads. That’s a very small number compared with daily traffic volumes, and anyone who’s delivered technology-intensive projects and programmes knows that a) things can change dramatically as volumes rise, b) non-technological things like politics and laws can cause serious delay, and c) ‘introduction to service’ at scale with end-users is always challenging! Accordingly, and you may vehemently disagree, the Badger feels that ‘driver-less’ vehicles are over-hyped and the likelihood of significant numbers on UK public roads within 10 years is low.

Why does the Badger hold this view? It’s nothing to do with how good the technology is. It’s because humans have managed risk, and gained excitement from doing so, since the Stone Age. It’s in our make-up. It’s part of why our species is successful. Humans have always used available information before taking a course of action, so it’s unlikely we’ll be psychologically comfortable with completely delegating our risk decisions to computer systems, no matter how clever they are.

In a world that seems increasingly chaotic, it doesn’t feel right to allow advanced, self-learning computer systems to decide on the risks we take in our daily routines. Whatever next! Will machines take all the fun out of life? Hopefully not, but perhaps the future that underpinned the Terminator film in 1984 isn’t that far away after all…

The market is ever changing, and the speed of change is getting faster. If a business doesn’t keep up with the pace of change then it becomes uncompetitive, irrelevant and eventually slips down the greasy pole to failure. There are several large UK companies – particularly, but not exclusively, retailers – who seem to have struggled to change and are now suffering the consequences. The Badger has followed events with interest, and triggered by a recent LinkedIn article penned by an ex-colleague, the Badger has reflected on his own experience with business change to see if one consistent learning point stands out. If so, what is it? Well, one thing emerged, namely that an engaged, effective and action-oriented ‘middle management’ is crucial to the fast pace of change needed for a business to remain relevant in today’s world.

A large company is like a super-tanker, but in today’s world it needs to manoevure like a nimble coaster not a super-tanker! The larger the company, the more important it is to have middle management that is experienced, motivated, and passionately aligned with change objectives and necessary timelines. Middle management is the engine room that implements change. It needs to operate as ‘fresh oil’ rather than ‘treacle’. Good company leaders know that ‘fresh oil’ means having the right people in middle management and treating them as intelligent officers rather than foot soldiers. Having and communicating a clear and credible vision, explaining not just instructing, and aligning hearts and minds to build belief and passion for the required journey and destination are also essential. Middle managers must have belief, respect and confidence in their company leaders, and vice versa. If any part of the equation is missing, then ‘treacle’ will be the order of the day and a barrier to progress.

The right company leadership is, of course, crucial. Middle management need to see their leaders as ‘lions’ not ‘donkeys’. The reverse is also true. Company leaders need confidence that middle management is populated with ‘lions’ not ‘donkeys’. The Badger learned over the years that when company leadership and middle management are both ‘lions’ then ‘fresh oil’ is likely to be in the engine room and change will be implemented nimbly and well. Any other lion/donkey combination is a recipe for ‘treacle’ and a slow and frustrating slide towards irrelevance and failure.

Finally, coasters have the advantage of being more manoeuvrable than super-tankers. Coasters can adapt quicker to changing circumstances. The Badger wonders how many super-tankers are struggling to adapt fast enough to remain relevant. Over the coming months it will be interesting to see which super-tankers have ‘lions’ and ‘fresh oil’ in place to successfully implement the changes needed to remain relevant and avoid the breakers yard…

The IT industry is full of acronyms, and the pretty good list in Wikipedia triggered some Badger thoughts about the likes of ERP, CRM, CTI, IVR etc. This group covers the system and software suites that support the processes and operations of a business in an integrated and efficient manner. SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Salesforce are big names in this arena, but there are many others with good, comprehensive and competitive offerings too.

Offerings tend to be functionally rich, highly configurable, and have customisable interfaces allowing data to be exchanged with products from different vendors. They are also ‘sticky’. Once in, they stay at the heart of the relevant business process for a very long time. Replacing legacy systems with such offerings is, however, rarely without substantial challenges, especially in large enterprises. It must go hand in hand with a client’s own human and process-related business transformation activities which, sadly, are often neglected. In the Badger’s experience, initial business cases are often not fully met. Delivery is often much later than expected and costs often exceed the set budget. Relationships between client and supplier can become very strained!

So, what emerged from the Badger’s stream of thoughts? Two things. Firstly, it’s time to sweep away the wide gamut of acronyms covering product-centric offerings associated with integrated and efficient operation of a business. It’s important to simplify and move with the times and the Badger thinks a single acronym – BOSS – should be the simple replacement for ERP, CRM, and many others. BOSS stands for ‘Business Operation & Service Systems’. Getting the word ‘business’ in not only feels appropriate for going forward in the 21st century, but it also provides a reminder of the importance of the human and process aspects noted above.

Secondly, the future looks bright for new and smaller businesses regarding BOSS! The days of having to pay for expensive professional services to configure particular offerings seem numbered. After all, if cars can be made driverless, then artificial intelligence will make the automatic provision and configuration of systems to run a business easy! Just imagine for a moment. How long will it be before you simply ask Alexa to set up and provide all the systems and services you need to run your new integrated and efficient business? Fantasy, you might say. May be – but the Badger doubts it. Commoditisation, easier usage, simplicity and increasing user centricity have been a feature of IT for many years, and that’s not likely to change.

And finally? Billy Connelly, the well-known comedian, said ‘I’m not nearly as afraid of myself or my imagination as I used to be’. That’s very apt. The Badger’s off to test his meanderings with Alexa…