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February 23, 2008

Wee hours in the Garden of Good and Evil

For 2008, my official pet peeve will be Fashion Stuttering.

Fashion stuttering comes in two flavors, one more henous than the other. The first sneaks up and whacks you in the head. The second is more direct.

How often is it that, from people who have been given a podium for pronouncements, you hear it said, "... and the thing is, is that ...", No one can explain the second "is", it just feels like it belongs there, as long as no one really scrutinizes it. There's an insidious, mainly tuneful, charm to it that lets the speaker get away with it. Try it yourself: almost everyone who says it says it the same way, with the same notes and rhythm in 4/4 time. Unfortunately, these people are the likes of politicians, distinguished interviewees on the broadcast news, teachers, and other people who are getting paid to be listened to and whose phrases infiltrate the volunteer talk force made up of the rest of us.

The second and more criminal fashion stuttering, more overtly theatrical and less of a brain seizure than the first, is when people perfectly competent at the efficient oral delivery of a sentence shoehorn it into an affectation of actual physical stuttering instead of just spitting it out. This takes place for dramatic effect, signifying that the thought being uttered is in the heat of the moment so emotionally exciting that it is actually mildly disturbing to the speaker's composure. For a speaker who we well know has no chronic stuttering affliction, the thing is is that the adopted stuttering bestows a brief aura of urgent candor that we are supposed to note is more important to accept at face value. Apparently, the best time to use it is when you want to have the last word on the subject, so you save it for then, accompanied with a slight throwing up of the hands to indicate a resignation to inescapable facts. Otherwise, it is used mainly for flirting. Hmmmm.

All that said and explained, you should never call someone out on these behaviors, unless you would like them to never speak to you again.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at 5:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 6, 2008

Proof Politicizes Architecture

Management requires an ongoing accountability for effectiveness. Normally, this accountability is the recognized set of terms for "proof". The accountability includes some model of measures, and while the model may be good or bad, the agreement by interested parties to use the same model makes it the argument that counts the most, even if it is wrong.

The model then represents the ruling hypothesis about effectiveness and, in short, memorializes the belief system in place about how to make progress. This fuels, in turn, a prevailing culture of proof that casts its influence over the several necessary layers of enablement that allow for effectiveness to result. The problem is that this influence may be inappropriate, and to avoid being misled by it we need to know why.

The answer is that the layers of enablement are variables, and the combinations of their variations offers more than one path to effectiveness. To describe an occasion of how effectiveness resulted, we would monitor variations within threshholds on as many as seven layers:

  1. Effectiveness is usually a measure of the degree to which an actual outcome matches a desired outcome.
  2. But the outcome is a strength of reaction to an impact generated by some agent.
  3. The level of impact observed can itself be more or less than expected, or desired, or needed -- and often there is insufficient attention paid to distinguishing the three characteristics (which is what allows the seeming inevitability of unintended consequences).
  4. The cause of the observed level of impact is a state or an output.
  5. The agent of that state or output is a quality level of process.
  6. The runrate of the process consumes inputs.
  7. The level of supply of inputs allows the processing.

In this view, the bottom four layers predispose whatever can happen in the top three, which is why the bottom four are so routinely captured by the design of an architecture. But if the architecture is unfamiliar or expensive, the distance between layer 4 and layer 3 is quite large. The burden of proof will fall to the architect to demonstrate bridging the gap.

With some "proof-of-concept", the effort is made, but it must be accompanied by its own "concept-of-proof" that relieves it from the pressure of "measuring up to" the top two layers.

It takes gutsy decision makers, or ones with little to lose, to accept this -- rather than to impose the top-line measure as the justification for considering the architecture at all. Innovators and early adopters accept their proof points at level 4, while laggards are hard pressed to dig below level 1. Consequently, the architecture in question gets positioned on the spectrum somewhere between demonized and championed.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack