I never thought I'd See This: Consultants are, gasp, Good?!

In a recent Slate article, we read that management consultants are actually a boon to business!

A recent experiment by World Bank and Stanford researchers illustrate the dramatic impact of management “technology” on the way companies are run. The researchers randomly assigned a management makeover to a handful of Indian textile firms, while at the same time following a set of control textile factories to benchmark the effects of good management.
Out of chaos, order arose: Supply closets were no longer strewn about with yarn, factory floors were cleaned up, inventory and control processes improved production line efficiency. The benefits of good management were such that Accenture’s services—which were provided to the companies for free as part of the experiment—would have paid for themselves through greater profitability within a year: The researchers estimated a profit increase of more than $300,000 annually as a result of management improvements, as compared with the $250,000 market price of the consulting services they received.
What brought about these changes? Exactly the sorts of things that the managers of Davos are good at: designing incentives, ensuring clear and well-defined assignments of tasks and responsibilities, putting in place protocols to manage and track inventory and production. These are not new ideas. They have been the standard protocols of much-maligned managers since they first appeared on the scene with the advent of transcontinental railroad. It’s just that management, despite its age, is not evenly distributed around the world.

Slate's assertion: Better management stands a far greater likelihood of making the world wealthier and healthier. And that's a good thing.


- Posted by Tom/Bluedog

Apple Misses Target, Shares Slip

Some disappointing news for Apple Fandom (well, shareholders). While sales of iPhone and other nifty gadgets continue, some targets are missed. Of course, Tim Cook looks on the bright side:

“No technology company has ever reported these kind of results,” chief executive Tim Cook said in a conference call with analysts after the company reported its earnings for the first quarter of its fiscal 2013 year. “Apple is in one of the most prolific periods of innovation and new products in its history.”

Sorry to be a downer, but I said this *way back* when SJ left/was booted out the first time. Without its leader, a cult, ahem, company has ultimately a hard time avoiding the downwards spiral (the same as Microsoft without Bill Gates, IMHO).

Luckily, SJ started NeXT, and was able to continue development of the BSD-based operating system that powers Macs and iOS today. And he picked up Pixar, which saved Disney, thanks to John Lasseter. And learned an awful lot about life...

But no to be 100% negative -- I think Apple has a WHOLE LOT of smart/creative and driven people. It will continue to be a great company. But without its founder at the helm, stormy seas ahead.

Intellectual property and file sharing co-habitation re-think needed

As this ZDNet opinion rightly points out, file sharing and copyright infringement are not synonymous. Kim Dotcom

deserves the protection of New Zealand's legal system; the case against him is muddled, and a rush to extradite him to the U.S. was ill-thought-out. Even if he broke some U.S. laws, Kim Dotcom's mega site may not even be about theft, as the New York Times points out.

In the middle of the 20th century, criminal law reformers were sufficiently annoyed by all of this specialization and ad hoc-ness that they decided to do something about it.

In 1962, the prestigious American Law Institute issued the Model Penal Code, resulting in the confused state of theft law we’re still dealing with today.

In a radical departure from prior law, the code defined “property” to refer to “anything of value.” Henceforth, it would no longer matter whether the property misappropriated was tangible or intangible, real or personal, a good or a service. All of these things were now to be treated uniformly.

Before long, the code would inform the criminal law that virtually every law student in the country was learning. And when these new lawyers went to work on Capitol Hill, at the Justice Department and elsewhere, they had that approach to theft in mind.

Then technology caught up.

The NYT presents a pretty clear thesis: "...stop trying to shoehorn the 21st-century problem of illegal downloading into a moral and legal regime that was developed with a pre-20th-century economy in mind. Second, we should recognize that the criminal law is least effective — and least legitimate — when it is at odds with widely held moral intuitions."

High Tech Projects can have Serious Complexity Issues

Boeing is the leader in air craft manufacturing, and the Dreamliner is characterized as the most advanced, best performing and most comfortable passenger plane to date. The approach the company took in the design and building of the plane is just as revolutionary.

Boeing took a radical approach to working with many suppliers -- 787 development and production involved a large-scale collaboration with numerous suppliers around the world. The manufacturer assigned the global subcontractors to do as much assembly themselves as practical, and deliver completed subassemblies to Boeing for final construction. The intent was to have a leaner assembly line and lower inventory, with pre-installed systems reducing final assembly time by as much as three days.

The aircraft was designed to become the first production composite airliner, with its fuselage assembled in one-piece composite tubular sections instead of multiple aluminum sheets, the approach used on most modern aircraft. Its "fly-by-wire" approach is the most extensive implemented, outside of the U.S. military.

But, as with many complex technological undertakings, problems materialize, sometimes even after the project is stamped "done" by management. In fact, with the case of the Dreamliner, serious concerns have arisen regarding electrical problems. And, with an aircraft, such problems translate into the safety of passengers, crew and others. Human life is at stake when 200+ people are traveling at subsonic speeds. So, caution is always called for, as the recent grounding of All Nippon Airway's fleet of Dreamliners shows.

What can information technology professionals learn from this on-going story? In the past, all products were handmade, the work of artisans rather than manufacturers. Cars, clocks, and firearms, for example, started out as being made one at a time, and each iteration was subtly different than the one the craftsmen finished just the day before. Over time industry has learned the value of standardized, interchangeable parts, and ultimately, about mass production. Even "mass customization." Though the retro movement highlights handiwork, for most products, systematic production yields far better products at much lower costs.

This FastCompany article discusses how NASA makes their onboard shuttle software. Take a look at NASA's checklist (PDF) to see how 100% defect free is necessary when lives are on the line.

File under WTF...

Your best employee is your most productive, right? Maybe he/she is TOO productive. Take this case... the top tech person at this firm outsourced his own job, and garnered top ratings for his "efforts."

A security audit of a US critical infrastructure company last year revealed that its star developer had outsourced his own job to a Chinese subcontractor and was spending all his work time playing around on the internet.

The firm's telecommunications supplier Verizon was called in after the company set up a basic VPN system with two-factor authentication so staff could work at home. The VPN traffic logs showed a regular series of logins to the company's main server from Shenyang, China, using the credentials of the firm's top programmer, "Bob".

Read more at The Register...