Many Happy Returns

Last weekend, like many US citizens, I spend a good deal of time completing and submitting my tax returns. I use a very popular software product and it does a terrific job of telling me how much I have to pay at the end of the year.

But this is not about tax preparation software, or a complaint that I owe a bunch of money. In fact, I  carefully structure my taxes each year to ensure that I do owe money at the end of the year. Not so much that I will have to pay a penalty, but enough so I get the use of some cash all year instead of lending it, interest free, to the government.

No, this is about understanding the totality of a problem and not focusing exclusively on one piece or part. Its about thinking in context and not in a vacuum. Don't miss the forest for the trees.  Make sure you see the big picture.

Okay, enough platitudes.  What the heck am I talking about?

Every year at this time we hear lots of discussions about tax returns.  People carry on about how much money they got back or gripe about the ridiculous amount they had to pay. Friends, neighbors, coworkers and family members all compare notes.  There is glee in the voices of those who expect to receive a check. They revel in the victory of getting money back, while "losers" like me, who must write a check,  are supposed to feel bad. They hang their head in shame and disgust.

But the only thing that really matters is how much tax did you pay in total. What was your effective tax rate. Everyone knows you have taxes  taken out of your pay and held throughout the year. Depending on how well these have been estimated, you may have too much or too little taken out, resulting in a difference between what you owe and what was withheld for the whole year.

Oh, I understand that some people see the refund as a forced savings program, and it can be a pretty effective one. Others, like me, prefer to retain the use of the cash until we are forced to hand it over to Uncle Sam.

But there are those who fail to see that only your total income and tax liability should be used as a basis for comparison.  Two people making about the same amount of money but having very different tax situations might pay very different amounts.  How much they get back or pay in April is irrelevant, merely a function of how much was withheld. The question should be how much did you pay in total.

The ability to put things into context, and to grasp the larger picture is important in every situation. All too often, business and technology professionals will focus on one aspect of a problem and lose sight of how that fits into the whole enterprise. The customer satisfaction scores become the goal instead of satisfied customers. Adding more fields to the data base becomes the solution, instead of understanding the data and calculations needed to answer the real question.

As senior management, we see all aspects of the business, both inside and outside of the company. It is incumbent on us to keep an eye out for the people in our organizations who are only comparing the size of their refunds and miss the larger issues.

It is up to us to  make sure they have a better, more complete view from the bridge.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Don't Blame It On The Tool

Ever smash your thumb with a hammer? Have the screwdriver slip and poke a hole in your skin?  Seems like human nature is to react by throwing the tool and yelling at it as if it did it to you on purpose, as if the tool had any means of doing anything on its own!

As a society, we work hard to find excuses for all the problems of the world caused by people. Children are protected from over-demanding teachers and coaches, and criminals defended from prosecution under the law. Sadly, many of our role models are stars and athletes with a lifestyle of self indulgence.

We have become a nation of  "not my fault". There is always some reason why we were unable to fulfill some obligation, keep a promise, make a due date or just behave properly. 

When John Belushi is finally cornered by Carrie Fisher in the original Blues Brothers movie, he drops to his knees and strings a series of excuses together; "I ran out of gas! I--I had a flat tire! I didn't have enough money for cab fare! My tux didn't come back from the cleaners! An old friend came in from out of town! Someone stole my car! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT!"

We encounter this very same mindset in the workplace. It was the "system" that failed, not me.

One of my favorite uncles once asked me about a problem with his gas bill. Seems the utility sent an invoice for thousands of dollars which was clearly an error. When he called the company he was told the 'computer' made an error. He asked me, since I was in technology, how computers could make mistakes like this? Of course, computers don't make mistakes, people do.  Perhaps the meter reader transposed digits, or a data entry clerk entered the wrong amount. But someone, some human did something which ultimately caused my uncle's bill to be wrong. We all know the acronym GIGO (garbage in, garbage out.) 

It's easy to miss a deadline because email was down, or the phones were not working. My PC had a virus, my laptop ran out of battery and I didn't have a charger, my cell phone fell in the toilet and the dog ate my spreadsheet. We sound a little like John Belushi. 

Where there is a will, there is a way. First, accept responsibility for your own actions. Don't blame the tool. Don't blame others. Get creative and find ways of overcoming obstacles. Hold to your commitments. Go the extra distance. Strive to reach your goals no matter what may stand in the way.

"It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."

Despite untold numbers of police cars, these boys managed to deliver the money. So "Hit It !!"

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Covey, tea or milk?

Quite often system projects are launched with a lengthy discussion of some data set that is needed, or a set of exciting new tools or techniques that could be used for reporting. There is debate over how and where to store specific fields of data, record layouts and structures. Sometimes there is a plan for who will gather and maintain these data.  But all of this without any clarity on the ultimate purpose for the exercise. What problem are we solving? What question are we answering?

The great author Steven Covey, in his Seven Habits, had us embrace the notion to start with the end in mind.  Know what the goal is before you set out to achieve it. It is often said when you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

In system design the objective is not to have a cool system design but rather to meet a specific need or answer a specific question. Before we can identify the information or calculations we need we must fully understand the problem being addressed.

This morning I read a request for assistance with a technology to locate trailers. The parameters of the problem were well articulated. The trailers are stored at several hundred locations and can be at rest for long periods of time. Facts like battery life and fuel efficiency were included. Several popular location technologies such as  RFID and GPS were mentioned and discounted for various reasons.  The author asked for help with a solution.

But after reading this, it struck me, we still don't know the problem being solved.  Surely the company wants to know where the trailers are for a reason. There is a problem being solved and it is not merely knowing where the trailers are.  Are we trying to optimize the size and locations of storage yards or monitor fuel use or equipment life? Perhaps it is an attempt to optimize the schedule by locating the closest available trailer.

In any event, unless we know the question we may spend considerable time finding or creating some new methodology for locating the trailers without ever solving the actual problem.

My favorite tactic is to disrupt any meeting by magically producing with pencil and paper the system output exactly as requested and pushing it across the table to the requester. Once they have it I ask what they will do with it. Their response will lead to more refinement of the report or analysis, or will answer their question and, importantly, should  lead to some action.

If they cannot answer the question, there is no point in going any further.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Do You Know How To Avoid Catching A Bug?

As some of you who follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus know, I frequently share articles on cyber security and the potential threat of infection. Malware of all kinds are appearing and they run rampant on the internet. Authors predict cyber attacks will result in everything from identity theft to the annihilation of mankind.

On any given day you can read about new threats discovered, a variant of an older piece of code modified to be even more clever and evade detection. These programs hide in the background of computers, poking and prodding, collecting information and even delivering the electronic goods to the bad guys.

Companies and governments are very concerned that cyberspace is the new battleground and increasingly sophisticated malware is the new weaponry. Corporations are afraid of losing trade secrets and governments are afraid of losing control.

Programs like the now famous Stuxnet have been devised and successfully targeted to another country where it caused weapons related manufacturing equipment to self-destruct.

Companies spend millions of dollars to erect solid defenses including firewalls and various intrusion detection systems. Every computer is outfitted with malware detection updated regularly to ward off the most recent threats. Government networks are even more secure with no physical connections to the outside.

But the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weak link will always be the people using the computers.

I am continually amazed at the level of investment in hardware, software and the cost of remediation, as compared to the paltry amount of education delivered to employees and the public. We're frequently warned about diet and exercise, smoking, drinking and drugs. Yet, have you ever seen a public service announcement about the latest zero day exploit? A breakout of the flu or a bad batch of canned peaches will be plastered all over television news.

Perhaps we need an "amber" alert for computing systems. How about a couple of corny slogans such as "if you see something behaving oddly on your computer, say something," or perhaps "always make sure your memory stick is virus free before inserting it in another person's computer."

If there are as many serious threats out there as one would be lead to believe, it is going to be incumbent on each and every computer user to be fully versed in how to avoid threats, how to spot potential problems and what to do to quickly alert others when they are discovered.

Computer security should be addressed in the same way as public health.  Teach everyone how to engage in safe computing, how to obtain safe and effective remedies, and how to avoid spreading the disease once they have it.

Captain Joe

 Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

An Ounce of Prevention

In my many years as a technology professional, one of the worst trends I have observed is the preference for the quick fix. This is the patch, the work-around, the extra step or two that compensates for an otherwise flawed process.

There is an old adage that suggests there is never enough time to do it right, but there is always enough time to do it over.  This is clearly now the order of the day.

How many times does a road crew have to fill the same pothole before realizing the street has to be repaved?  We have become so adept at creating ways of avoiding problems, we forget to back and fix their root cause. One of my favorite road signs is the one that says BUMP ahead. If you know there is a bump, don't hang a sign, fix it!

This mindset carries over into technology. Apparently it is  easier to dump raw data into a spreadsheet and massage it until all the missing or incorrect values have been resolved. But do we ever take the time to track back to the source of the bad data and put new processes in place to avoid storing them in the first place?  No, instead we dump the same flawed data month after month into a spreadsheet. In fact, we build macros to automate the correction process.

I've observed in some of the new programming tools we have lost the ability to check a return code. Those of you who may have written programs will recall these special variables set to specific values after an operation. A return code of zero (0) usually meant success, while other values would indicate a reason for the failure. Looking at these codes would enable you to take the appropriate action to recover from the failure or warn of bad results.

Even if error codes are available, often it appears they are not being used. It makes me wonder if error checking gone the way of memory optimization.  Now it only matters that the process ends, whether it did what it was supposed to or not.

An employee of mine many years ago reported that he had completed his assignment to write a piece of code. He had entered and compiled it successfully, loaded and executed it. It ran, he told me, so he was done. He then went on to mention it produced the wrong results, but he still considered his assignment complete. You can't make this stuff up.

We have to return to the discipline of getting it right the first time, or addressing the source of problems. Let's not continue to focus on mitigating the symptoms, let's instead get in there and cure the underlying disease.


Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC