Consultant is change agent for empowerment

I am pleased to have undertaken a three month engagement, formally as a software engineering consultant, in fact acting as a change agent for empowerment. By the end of the engagement, as a leadership team we had certainly seen a marked improvement in performance and engagement. Most of the positive feedback I received was themed around mentoring, experience and knowledge.

The explicit services expected of my role were to deliver software process improvements, to identify the gaps between current and best practice, define team structure, roles, KPIs for the engineering team and individual team members, responsibilities and accountabilities. In reality, the team needed to lift their spirits and confidence, to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge (or at least start on that path), and to be empowered to do their jobs effectively.

Effective KPIs are extraordinarily difficult to construct for software teams and even more so for individual developers. There are very useful project metrics to track, for example, the total number of issues, the number of new and resolved issues. For individual developers, KPIs should not be used as a stick; rather as a tool to identify training and development opportunities.

Part of the role was to help with current projects so I acted as software team leader, demonstrating by my own actions and words the behaviours and outcomes expected of a professional software engineering team. We introduced effective tools and lightweight processes for requirements and test management, issue-tracking and task management. However, daily stand-up meetings immediately led to improved visibility of the status of work-in-progress and greater engagement by the team members.

It is relevant to acknowledge the importance of bringing the team up-to-speed on contemporary patterns and practices, technology and professional conduct. The 'bookends' of requirements and testing envelope the regular, daily work of software engineers who undertake coding and unit testing.

Introducing modern C++ and C# practice included training and coaching in STL containers and iterators, Boost smart pointers, const-correctness, C++ idiom, unit testing frameworks, and so on. The relevance of design patterns, architectural layering and interface contracts also needed to be introduced as practical tools in the professional toolkit.

Of overriding importance over all of these facets of any engagement is that the role of the consultant is to empower both staff and management. Some consultants have a tendency to behave as if they are management themselves instead of coaching the existing managers, thus empowering them to manage effectively and to lead by their own example.

Computer for the mobile professional

I'm typing this article on my brand new Toshiba Mini NB200 netbook, keying it's brilliant, full-sized keyboard, viewing on an external, full-sized LCD monitor and using an external USB mouse. This is an effective combination which is starting to convince me that the new generation of netbooks are a viable desktop and laptop alternative for mobile professionals who require access to their own computer.

Its heart, in common with comparable machines, is a 1.66GHz Atom processor bolted on to 1GB of DDR2 RAM along with a 160GB hard disk and WiFi. This is just as powerful as the previous generation of laptops and I believe is sufficient for most daily tasks including email, reading and writing documents, and even casual software development.

For me, the keyboard, mouse pad, mouse buttons and screen were the most-important features which drew me to the Toshiba over excellent mini netbooks from Asus, who invented the genre, and HP who have previously set the standard.

Let's install Eclipse SDK 3.5 and see how we go. I have already installed my registered copy of WinZip (great bit of software) so unzip, start up the development environment for the so-called Galileo release, create a new Java project, debug and voila, "Hello there!"

Easy and fast, usable even on the built-in 10.1" screen. Likewise, OpenOffice (the excellent open source office package), Microsoft Office (the academic version used by my wife, a teacher), the usual web browsers, gmail and google docs all work extremely well on this modestly-priced and light-weight platform.

I had hoped to have built-in Bluetooth for wireless connection to keyboard, mouse and mobile-phone modem however the advertisements for some of our major retailers misleadingly imply the 00D model has Bluetooth by writing 'Toshiba Mini NB200/00D Netbook features the Intel® Atom™ 1.6Ghz processor, 1GB Ram, a 160GB Hard Drive, Built-in webcam, Bluetooth®, Wi-Fi, 10.1" screen and ...' and adding 'Bluetooth Enabled No' in the fine print of the specifications.

(I believe it's an accidental sin of omission. It seems the up-market 00P/00Q models do include Bluetooth but not the cheaper 00C/00D models. I have let them know and they promised me a cheap Bluetooth adapter and to fix the web page.)

What else? I am a consultant and part of the reason for me to have a fully-functional ultra-portable is to enable me to work on the run, whether in coffee shops which lack WiFi access, or offices with good internal network security, so I must be able to connect to Telstra's excellent Next G network using Nokia PC Suite. It would have been useful to have built-in Bluetooth so I wouldn't have to remember to carry an extra cable as well as the netbook, on top of my mobile phone I always have with me.

Connecting to the Next G network using Nokia PC Suite, over a USB cable, works flawlessly and the connection is very fast, often bettering my broadband connection speed. I only use my mobile phone as a modem for email, documents and web access using gmail, google docs and so on. Beware you will quickly hit your monthly download limit or run-up excessive charges if you start to download stuff off the net willie-nillie.

Which reminds me, earlier today I phoned Telstra about an SMS I received telling me I had used all 150MB of my monthly downloads. Last night I trialled using my mobile as a modem for the first time on the new netbook. After speaking to five different people and being on hold for ages, they spoke to a techie who said it was not possible for me to download 130MB in the 20 minutes I was connected!

I actually downloaded 7.5MB Firefox 3.5 in a few minutes - blazingly fast - much faster than my broadband connection was running last night. So they upgraded my data pack to 300MB and credited $19.95 to my account - I have to call next month to change it back again to my usual $10 per month data pack for 150MB.

To conclude, I have no hesitation in recommending you consider a netbook as an effective computing platform for the mobile professional. In addition, I can confidently assert that you can use your netbook with an external screen and mouse as a desktop and laptop alternative for all but the most demanding of tasks.

2020 Vision: WA

Tonight I walked out of the AIM panel discussion sundowner 2020 Vision: WA – Great Place to be? Or What Happened? early because it was boring, the panelists were trite and poorly prepared. While I was there WA did not cop a mention and we may indeed ask, for what portended to be an excellent event, what happened?

Many years ago I read a story in I think Reader's Digest about a school principal who was interrupted by a student saying that he had the right to express his dissenting opinion. The principal replied that in his ignorance all the student had to contribute was his prejudice. The panelists managed to express several prejudices without an iota of evidence in support.

Let's introduce the panelists before we critically examine a few of the ideas they paraded as futurism in the guise of snappy sound bites. Facilitated by James Lush, presenter at 720ABC Perth, who did not make any effort to steer the discussion towards relevance, WA or otherwise, the panel comprised Craig Salt of Emotive Earth, Anni Macbeth, Futurist, Elizabeth Shaw of the Perth Youth Advisory Council and Peter Strachan, author of StockAnalysis.

The panelists were asked why it is important they are on the panel and their answers were as follows:

• Macbeth - Futurist, about the future.
• Salt - Sustainability, environment, making a buck.
• Shaw - Diversity of ideas, advocate on behalf of young people.
• Peter - Concerned citizen and former geologist - long time frame, need to get this ('the future') right; Gross National Happiness.
  

The panel were asked about the impact of the web and Macbeth spoke of virtual worlds improving the 3D world through access to knowledge ('knowledge is power') without any justification of how the range of tools she cited, from twitter to email, make this so.

She also said (I think) that some governments prevent access to the internet. I am unsure what she meant - if it is China she is alluding to then it would be simpler to just say so, and to explain the how/what of the impact; if not I have no idea what she was talking about.

Salt asserted that inevitably technology is part of the solution and he specifically mentioned hydrogen-powered cars. He replied to the query as to why these aren't commonly available by reciting the tired old cliche of a conspiracy to suppress the hydrogen economy, allegedly to bolster old-economy profits.

No mention that notwithstanding the discovery of new catalysts for the electrolysis of water it is incredibly energy expensive to produce hydrogen in the first place. In contrast to popular opinion, fuel-cell, hydrogen-powered cars are for the time being an impractical novelty, unless recharged by 'nuclear battery' - much as 'Pious' hybrids satirised by South Park are not so environmentally friendly as generally presumed.

After some misinformation sprouted about corporations allegedly colluding to prevent the wide-scale adoption of hydrogen-powered cars as part of a utopic hydrogen economy, the panelists proceeded to pan directors who pander to shareholder profits over the community and to encourage shareholder activism to remedy this unacceptable situation.

Strachan took the opportunity to paint Buffett or bankers (it was not clear) as acting to the benefit of shareholders over the wider community, relating him as saying you don't want to be reliant on the generosity of strangers, and bankers are pretty strange.

All of which I find very odd because Buffett, his fellow shareholders and their bankers are presumably all acting properly, in the case of Buffett and his colleagues as fiduciaries responsible for other people's investments. Speaking of our local corporations, the shareholders includes all of us by virtue of direct or indirect shareholdings through pension and superannuation funds.

Perhaps Shaw, a law graduate, could have mentioned the responsibility of directors to act in the best in interest of all shareholders, both current and future, and taken the time to explain the meaning of corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability and the influence of other stakeholders, eg. staff, suppliers and customers; instead of raising the non-issue of the gen-Y contribution to the election of Obama.

Can someone do a little research and confirm if this fact is accurate or outweighed by the swing in the Republican states across all age groups towards change? Again, no analysis was forthcoming of the change to be wrought by an Obama administration, if any, over Bush-era policies.

This assertion was also contradicted by the overarching consensus of the panelists and hand-raising members of the audience that individuals, not governments, would be the agents for change. I find it very odd that even here, let alone the USA, it is conveniently forgotten that government is of the people, by the people, for the people.

Aside from the absence of discussion about the WA context, I was disappointed with the uninformed dismissal of future innovation and engineering as part of the solution to the problems they had raised. Entirely backward looking, the consensus was that the future is bad.

Strachan said he is negative about the future, citing a billion hungry people, impending shortages of oil, copper and other commodities, and asserting that we would need three earths to universally maintain an Australian standard of living.

Irresponsibly, he chooses not to cite statistics of increasing standards of living and decreasing poverty in BRIC and developing economies as a result of globalisation and free trade, and fails to provide any supporting evidence to the contrary.

It was disappointing to hear only trite sound bites, unsupported and unsupportable propositions, no evidence presented or cited, nil reference to history or precedent, nor to the positive impact of technology, innovation and engineering on improving global standards of living.

The reality is that solutions to future problems, themselves largely or even utterly unknown, probably have not yet been discovered. A friend and colleague of mine likes to say that the stone age did not end because they ran out of stones; likewise the oil age will not end because we run out of oil.

I wonder what problems, apart from the prospect of war with the fall of old empires and the realignment of power, were being pondered in the first decade of the 20th century and their relevance today?

International Institute of Women in Engineering

One of my 4th year engineering students at Murdoch University, Sarah Corbin, has received sponsorship enabling her to attend the IIWE (International Institute of Women in Engineering) summer seminar in Paris, this July. Well done, Sarah!

For the pre-program preparation, they asked participants to research engineering practices in their own countries by talking to any engineers they might know. I am pleased that she asked me if I would do her a small favour and to give her my thoughts on the following questions regarding engineering in Australia.

The origins of its engineering traditions? We can cast a wide net to try and understand the origins of Aussie traditions in engineering. Personal achievement, immigration, mateship, European and Asian culture, national pride all have contributed to the maturity and respect with which Australian engineering capability is held.

The development of the Snowy River hydro power scheme is very well known, also locally the Perth-to-Kalgoorlie water pipeline; the leadership in mining practice and technology, including mining software (70% of which comes from Australia, mostly from Perth), and high technology where Australian work on radar with the British during WW2, and other scientific and engineering contributions in optical and radio astronomy.

These foundations contribute to the traditions of the engineers and firms that operate today.

The evolution of engineering as a discipline? In some ways Australia is a great leader, including construction, mining and high technology including solar cells, wide-area and wireless networking. In other ways, we focus on civil, power and mechanical engineering in our leading professional organisation, Engineers Australia, where advances in electronic, software and communications engineering are paid short shrift by comparison.

The emergence of professional and technical colleges is important but could do a lot more to support the basis of our technical disciplines rather than relying on, for example, professional associations and publications from the UK, Europe and USA.

How engineering is taught (theoretical or practical)? The teaching of engineering varies broadly and widely between institutions and disciplines. I think this is a good thing in principle because it prevents a monoculture from developing whereby a few dominant approaches would prevail over a diversity of ideas.

Some engineering courses emphasise the theoretical aspects in their teaching whereby others focus on practical applications, including laboratory and hands-on, but to my knowledge all courses strike a balance between these aspects. Similarly, I believe that it is desirable for some courses to emphasise the scientific and mathematical foundations, eg. physics, chemistry and biology, where others instead try to build a broader, general engineering basis somewhat like Oxford.

What type of engineering is done in their countries? Every kind of engineering possible is done in Australia, from civil, mining, oil&gas, power through to electronics, communications and nuclear. I think the traditions of Australian engineering lend themselves to encouraging the development of innovative solutions and exploration of the creative dimensions of engineering - every field or discipline of engineering is fair game.

What does society expect of its engineers? Both too much and too little. The occasional legal action against engineers may be reasonable, eg. based on negligence, or unreasonably based on ignorance of technical issues and the pedantic misapplication of standards and the law. The situation is improving as members of the legal profession have better knowledge of technology or themselves come from the engineering profession.

On the other hand, engineers do not always meet up with society's expectations for a worthwhile contribution to political debate on technical subjects, eg. infrastructure and nuclear power. However, I do not believe that engineers should lobby outside our areas of expertise.

The social status of an engineer? In Australia, engineers are generally highly regarded and our work is viewed in a positive light. For some reason, parents and the community do not perceive engineering as a career with the same status as medicine, law, business or architecture, for example, when I believe the earning potential, prospects and satisfaction are equal to or sometimes higher than the alternatives.

Professional office practices in their countries? Compared to the same professions I mention above, it us arguable that professional development, coaching and mentoring in the workplace are not paid sufficient attention in engineering as they should be.

Some organisations have professional development plans or graduate programs, and the better ones include a mentoring component, but we are lax when it comes to the equivalent of an internship, clerkship or equivalent for admission to professional practice.

In general, the engineering office environment is informal, collegial, sociable and fun.

Engineering ethics? It is desirable but not often mandatory for engineers to be members of their relevant professional association, often Engineers Australia, or to have chartered membership of this or an equivalent organisation in order to carry out duties with certain responsibilities.

One of the advantages of membership is explicit acceptance of the need to adhere to a professional code of ethics. Notwithstanding this, I believe that engineers of all stripes, members or otherwise, practice in Australia with the highest levels of ethical conduct in all aspects of their work.

It is virtually unheard of in Australia to hear about an ethical breach in professional conduct in regard to technical, financial or social aspects of engineering practice.

Sustainable energy as practiced in this region? Australia has a long history of research and deployment of sustainable energy solutions including photo-voltaic technology and solar heating, often for household water heating. Recently this has started to pick up pace with the Solar Cities program but we still arguably lag USA and Spain in this area.

Interesting developments of geothermal power have enormous potential to complement existing hydro power and an expanding network of wind farms. Smart grids and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) have the potential to revolutionise the demand-side towards more sustainable practices.

The Kimberley

The Kimberley and the Pilbara regions of north Western Australia have beautiful, rugged, magical locations scattered with relatively few, wonderful, colourful and sweet people calling home far flung towns and outposts. I went to the north hoping to discover something of the people and the country: with this and more I returned, excited by the limitless opportunities in the north and the implications and possibilities for state development.

Over the past week I have had the most amazing adventure in the north of Western Australia, travelling in remote areas through the Pilbara and the Kimberley. As part of the referendum for daylight saving, I was privileged to be a Mobile Polling Place Manager covering a number of remote communities flung across the Great Sandy and Gibson Deserts, near Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing, and up the Gibb River Road.

The view from the original Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route is simply stunning.

The highlight for me was meeting and speaking with the wonderful people I met in the remote communities I visited at Punmu, Kunawarritju (near Well 33) and Kiwirrkurra in the northern Pilbara, and Balgo Hill, Ringers Soak, Yiyili, Mt Barnett, Mt House station and Imintji in the Kimberley. Note to anyone in a position of influence that Imintji can do with more money for necessary projects and another project officer would be helpful.

Yiyili is a disparate community with more than the usual share of problems including a multiplicity of small, unviable communities that should be merged into one, central township with shared services. Aside from this anomaly, due to the process whereby the system of grants favour small Aboriginal corporations, I saw plenty of evidence for close and loving family relationships. Mums and dads, their children and parents in the one community, sharing the happiness of a simple life absent the modern amenities we take for granted.

As mobile polling manager, I issued ballots at most of these locations when Ron, with whom I was travelling, moved on to other sites. I found the indigineous people to be warm and friendly, responsive to conversation and respect. At a couple of spots I kicked around a footy with some of the guys who were looking forward to attending sporting carnivals or travelling to play in matches.

Polling place in the great outdoors at Yihili community

This article is something like a collection of travel notes with a few yarns together with speculation and commentary on my part, rather than a proper travelogue. So let's get cracking with our flight out of Broome with my flying from the right hand seat in the Twin Comanche. We headed south east and Ron, the Returning Officer for the Kimberley, dropped me off at Punmu for my first time as a polling manager and my experience in a remote community. Ron flew on to another community while I undertook the poll and later returned to fetch me.

Ron with a bunch of the local kids making good use of the voting pencils at Kunawarritju, the community near Well 33.

We proceeded on to Well33 which we handled together and then Kiwirrkurra, near the Northern Territory border. A cute bunch of aboriginal children took a shine to the pencils and paper, drawing up a storm while listening to their favourite music on a cell phone.

The lack of economic, social and strategic viability of several remote communities is apparent on a (literally) flying visit. Locals and other visitors who know a heckuva lot more than I do about the social and historical context are happy when asked to make suggestions about opportunities in these communities.

The development of local businesses is a familiar and reasonable suggestion. From camels hunted for food and captured for sale to the Middle East, from whence they came, now suffering from disease, there is an enormous number of untamed beasts including horses and cattle, also domestic cattle, which can be raised and marketed in a sustainable way. Clearly substantial mentoring and business leadership will be needed but the locals are ready to take a grip on their own futures.

I have written elsewhere about the idea of a combined gas-water pipeline however there are a number of other viable options for opening up the north-west and mid-west of Western Australia to economic development. In addition to coastal and inland pipeline options, it has been suggested to redirect the Fitzroy River inland with a levee to fill the massive series of disconnected lakes into a contiguous river system flush with water to irrigate the Kimberley and the Pilbara.

State and federal governments must continue to improve the physical and social environments in remote communities by investing in infrastructure, continuing to improve health and educational outcomes, and directing greater leadership into those areas. At all leadership levels including executive, project and community officers, teachers and health workers, and other workers who contribute to community life, the most important resource is the people who put in their hearts and souls into improving the lives of the local inhabitants.

The strategic value of the remote communities increases as trade, tourism and transport grow in importance across the state. The Gibb River Road is a major tourist attraction giving the Imintji store significant importance for travellers; likewise for those exploring the Canning Stock Route, communities and stores at Well 33 and other stops are extremely important.

With the current absence of significant development in these remote areas many of the remote communities have a limited future and offer few if any employment options for the indigenous locals, beyond limited opportunities offered as part of the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP). While local business development will create jobs and enhance the economic and social sustainability of many communities, large-scale state development will make the strategic importance of these locations paramount.

An inland pipeline could entirely change the physical and metaphorical landscape, at the same time as demonstrating to ourselves and the rest of the world that we have the gumption and foresight to make some far-reaching decisions.

The scientific method

The scientific method applies to climate science, too.

The main problem with Robert Manne's article Cheerleading for zealotry not in the public interest in The Weekend Australian of 25-26 April 2009, is that its misrepresents science as being inaccessible to the lay public and seems to dismiss scientific debate as a brand of politics.

Professor of politics Robert Mann may be but statistician he is not, parading the "tens of thousands of climate scientists" against "a few dozen scientists" he describes as "global warming pseudo sceptics" without a hint of irony. Notwithstanding unanswered questions about the integrity of the numbers, whether tens of thousands or merely hundreds of dissenters to the orthodox theory of global warming, is irrelevant.

Science is not a popularity contest. The assertions we make, our assumptions and methodology, must stand up to critical scrutiny in order to carry any weight. Anyone with an elementary education should be able to understand and bear witness to such an exposition if it is carried out clearly and free of unnecessary jargon. We can all understand and judge for ourselves the difference between good science and bad science.

According to the renowned physicist Richard Feynman, "a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

Climate science is more than just atmospheric science and other fields have much to contribute to our understanding of the complex phenomena that drive the Earth's climate. Our understanding cannot be deferred to an elite cliche of trusted authorities. Feynman exhorts his students to distrust authorities and to think for themselves. With climate science and science in general we have a responsibility to ignore dogma.

Throughout his career, Feynman was concerned about the inability to teach science properly in schools and critically reviewed many inadequate text books purporting to teach the subject. I wonder what he would have had to say about the quality of the science and public debate about global warming and climate change.

There is a formal relationship between personal and professional ethics, intellectual integrity and the way in which responsible members of society address public debate. The wonderful, historic speech by William Clifford to the London Metaphysical Society in 1876 deals with this very issue.

The great divide between Popper and Kuhn on the philosophical basis of contemporary science applies with a twist. The debate about the nature of the development of scientific truth is usually understood to evolve from the scientific community engaging in Popper's critical rationalism in execution of their research.

Kuhn believes that scientists work in a series of paradigms rather than actually following, as espoused by Popper, a falsificationist methodology. It appears that the greenhouse debate falls squarely into this camp as being an accepted theory, a paradigm of scientists that matches the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times.

While nobody seriously denies that environmental action is needed in order to make the most of our limited natural resources and to preserve these resources, and indeed the livability of our planet for future generations, it is a stretch to assume that such a belief applies to all aspects of our human interaction with the planet.

A while back cold fusion was a similarly controversial issue, if less enduring in the media. In summary, most of the early studies into cold fusion are widely believed to be cases of scientific fraud or just poor science; there isn't any reliable evidence for cold fusion as a viable energy source; current physics cannot explain cold fusion but funded research continues nevertheless.

In these cases reputations have been tarnished or destroyed but the record has largely been set straight and it is equally certain that the climate debate will eventually return to normality. Some people will continue to believe there is some kind of global conspiracy to suppress their own favourite, nonscientific idea but in truth it is highly unlikely to be the case.

Conspiracy theories aside, we should examine our moral and ethical position stand on this kind of issue. Is it proper for someone to promote a theory they believe to be for the greater good when they know that theory to be flawed? How about if they hold a reasonable belief in the theory without proper justification?

In the former case, there is scientific fraud and a kind of personal conceit that beggars belief. In the latter case, we again have the same sort of intellectual laziness that William Clifford railed against. Public trust in the scientific establishment has always been one that ebbs and flows, increasing trust and respect as people become more educated and declining when seeming advances lead, in war for example, to widespread unhappiness and distress.

For example, the hockey stick graph - smoothing the Medieval Warm Period - that has so badly humiliated many right-minded members of the IPCC and damaged its standing features prominently in An Inconvenient Truth and even more so in the public consciousness. Such distortions and convenient mistruths to push one line of thinking are quite damaging to trust and serve to close down alternate lines of enquiry.

Manne states a basic truth that "those of us who are not trained scientists are in no position to make independent judgements on the fundamental scientific issues for ourselves" because we lack the training to assess the relevance of a specific theory in a narrow, scientific speciality. On the other hand, it is manifestly untrue to assert that we cannot be part of the scientific process. It in incumbent on scientists to communicate their work and on science writers, among others, to report on their findings.

Science is not concerned with rhetoric and philosophical debate but with the development of theories that are consistent with the observed facts, making predictions and conducting repeatable experiments based on the application of those theories. A theory that explains the observations may be consistent but it is insufficient unless it is falsifiable insofar as is can be used to make testable predictions.

There is no us-and-them in science, the stakes are not about winners and losers in public debate. Instead, scientific theory becomes generally accepted because it has been communicated widely and scientists grow in confidence in its application. When facts are discovered that are contrary to the predictions of the theory then either the theory is modified or it is discarded altogether and replaced with an alternative theory that does fit the facts.

Accepted theory is incontrovertible because one cannot deny observed facts and the consistency of the theory with these facts. At least, this is usually the case with science unless it becomes a circus or merely a parade of unsubstantiated ideas. The body of knowledge is not being added to nor our understanding abetted by the pronouncement of speculative new theories in an attempt to explain anomalies with the current theory.

The Ptolemaic system of perfect spheres, with the arbitrary addition of epicycles in order to explain the apparent retrograde motion of the planets, held sway for 1000 years because Ptolemy was held in such high regard as an authority. It was not until the Copernican heliocentric cosmology, with the later support of Galileo's observations of the phases of Venus, that the Earth was finally displaced from the centre of the universe.

This week I read in the media of the ozone hole over Antarctica negating the effect of ocean warming and leading to a counter-intuitive increase in ice volumes; other articles highlight anecdotal evidence for increases in ice mass and pack ice over a period of several decades. While the effect of the ozone layer on Antarctic ice mass is a plausible hypothesis it will only become a theory once it has been validated by modelling and when it is supported by empirical data.

Surely we can do better than this to stimulate and encourage public debate on this important subject and a range of other issues. The truth based on a rational, scientific approach is the minimum the public deserves on the issue of climate change.

ASWEC 2009

Due to other commitments, I attended only the final day of ASWEC 2009 on the Gold Coast having accepted an invitation to participate in a panel discussion on The Future of ASWEC. One highlight for me was catching up with old friends and making a few new ones.

Another was hearing Neville Holmes innervating keynote talk about The Prehistory and the Future of Agility, where he raised a number of issues and recommendations about elevating software engineering from its current state of practice to that similar to other professional engineering disciplines.

Neville Holmes has a long and distinguished record in the computer industry in Australia but I happen to know him from his remarkably lucid and insightful column written for Computer. I am grateful for the many clarifications and additional references that Neville has provided so I can improve this article. (Remaining errors are, of course, my own.) He started off by saying that he didn't know much about agile and found the Agile Manifesto of interest but "it was the Values that got me; they were the values we (IBM systems engineers) held back in the '50s and '60s."

Neville told several anecdotes (and had to restrain himself from telling several more) including about IBM Melbourne which had a service bureau of punch card machinery some years ago, all hardware programming by plug panels. There was a secret one in Defence Signals that being parallel and fast was used through the 70s. They later moved to Fitzroy Street, St Kilda when they got stored program computers that for the first time has separation between program and hardware reflected in a physical separation between programmers and operators.

Programming is a talent thing, some people can do it, some people can't. Ford Motor company ran courses to teach people to program and found that a program aptitude test was a very reliable indicator. They hired B-/A people, not A+ because they tend to disrupt. The A+ were reported to be poor team workers; I guess they'd be the best extreme programmers in today's terminology.

This was run by personnel "before management became inhuman." A chap from Personnel went around Ford setting the test. He sat the test himself and was one of the people selected. [My comment there was a jibe at the renaming of Personnel as Human Resources which seems to me to have authorised the treatment of people as resources rather than people.]

Management, "stupid idiots" put programmers and analysts in separate rooms; system analysts talk to users, programmers only to analysts. Much as mechanical engineers learn about bulldozers and other equipment, and when I did electrical engineering I experienced electrical and mechanical, eg. boilers, to gain enough awareness to be able to supervise technicians who carry out detailed design tasks.

We should put programmers in technical college and technical school. Salesmen dealt with management but the problem was managers didn't know what they wanted; managers didn't know what everyone else was doing. Using butcher paper and texta pens, carry out workshops with managers to work out what they do, over two days.

They work in isolated departments in hierarchical organisations where managers don't know what workers do. Wrote a program to produce a 6-12 month delivery schedule for ordering sheet metal, subassemblies and parts at Broadmeadows. The workers wanted to check the calculations! Instead they should have been interacting with suppliers.

Big projects don't work because they take a long time and may be out-of-date by the time they are delivered. The problem with projects is that they focus on software instead of data which is more important, "the data doughnut in the software hole," to enable adding components, interfaces to data.(*)

Embedded systems are "pretty damn hopeless, really" - for example, modern sewing machine has an "absolutely bloody shocking" user interface. The human machine interface, cognitive science and how people work, is more important than how machines work.

Professionals and the secondary profession; we have to understand data ("technician") from other professions, eg. medicine. Do combined/dual degrees in profession, and data or information engineering. Universities need to plan, probably easiest in the Melbourne model, because programmers "cannot hop around from field to field and expect to be successful" in each one.

The traditional staff, line and service model has been reincarnated as minders, grinders and finders. The "weird things that happen in government departments" because data processing departments became empires and centres of power. In Canberra, Malcolm Fraser split Treasury, who got the computing equipment, from Finance, who had the right to use it.

(*) Neville tells me (in private correspondence),

My reference was to an old popular song "As you go through life make this your goal: watch the donut and not the hole" (e.g. see www.skypilotclub.com/interview.html) from "Sometimes a Great Notion" (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sometimes_a_Great_Notion_(novel)) and I guess I assumed that readers and the ASWEC audience would make the connection of the title of my original essay (see eprints.utas.edu.au/1130).

Neville taught the chap how to use spreadsheets to support his work arranging the Premiers Conference using a spreadsheet for planning on typewriter terminals (before spreadsheets were supposedly invented).

We used to have a saying in IBM: "If you solve problems you breed albatrosses" (referring to Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner").

Neville says he was "banned from three departments for trying to enable users" and they reduced the dispatching priority to below that of batch whereby the slow response time meant it could only be used on weekends or after hours. [The ban was not directly related to my work at the Department of Finance, and it was not an official ban; local IBM management was asked to take me off those accounts by the DP sections of those departments. - Neville]

The tragedy of the recent walk in Blue Mountains where information from David Iredale about his position was ignored and not passed onto rescuers and police because it didn't match the computer program and training. People aren't thinking and want the computers to do this for them.(**)

Small business machines from IBM System 32, 36 and finally the wonderful System 38 had RPG (Report Program Generator) that used template programming. A sheet for each file; input/output files and processing files, "much easier than Cobol. Cobol, as you might know, is not very good at all."

Macro systems were very good in the 60s, stealthy development in IBM to develop assembly code for testing before the hardware was ready. A macro system so user to "write programs" and professionals added macros and kept them up to date.

The presentation is written in HTML because "I can control it instead of it controlling me" (i.e. PowerPoint). Empower users, "to hell with management" because management is interested in strategies and this is tactical.

The challenge: using technicians "focus on this language (eg. Java)" course called Professional Computing, learn five different languages (interpreters, eg, python, SQL). For programming, go to technical college; for data engineering, work in partnership with other professions. Look to enable users, not to take it away from them.

(**) My main point at this stage was that computers are used to avoid responsibility (eprints.utas.edu.au/2765).

A question was asked about teaching web development, concurrency, etc; the answer was better frameworks. To a question about analysis, design and coding activities; the answer is looking for close teamwork between engineers and technicians, "love agile iterations." Question about enabling the users but not ceding too much control as to "bring down the system"; answer is teamwork, not to isolate the users in spite of "mad dogs and other kinds of weirdos."

Responsibilities of engineers in data not software; look at users, community, code of ethics. Raise the stakes for software engineering, "should be much higher." To a question about what to teach in university degree; answer was content is not that important so long as you get the right mindset, the first job does a lot more in determining career.

After a break, the panel members spoke about the future of ASWEC, questions were asked of the audience, discussion ensued and the consensus was that ASWEC is basically alright the way it is. Overall ASWEC has a very good structure, albeit there are aspects that I would change, and any change could have unintended consequences. However the landscape is changing so there may not be any other choice than to accommodate some change in order for ASWEC to prosper.

My preamble to discussion:

Rugby first - I am happy to be in Queensland and pleased to say the Western Force beat the Queensland Reds a fortnight ago; I am not happy the Hurricanes beat us a week later.

The greatest strength of ASWEC is the co-location of academics involved in research and teaching with industry practitioners. However, for an engineering discipline which relies upon industrial practice for its existence there is too little 'meeting of minds.'

Software engineering practice must be informed by strong scientific underpinnings, including computer science and mathematics. Dijkstra and Parnas among others provided the foundations of this discipline decades ago but industry practice is lax and even academic memories are short.

Our assessments of planned, formal and agile methods are a case in point. The agile approach is fine for programming in the small but large-scale engineering projects in defence, utilities and government, enterprises and resource industries cannot be served by a simplistic approach.

With cheerful conceit we collectively forget lessons learned and continue to reinvent the same 'innovations' - as David Parnas reminded us in his keynote address at ASWEC in Brisbane four years ago.

At ASWEC in Sydney three years, Julian Edwards of Object Consulting remarked in his keynote that after inadequate requirements, the absence of architecture is the biggest cause of project failure. However I see scant attention being paid to architectural frameworks.

I believe that with appropriate analysis, any complex set of requirements can be partitioned into systems and subsystems; the software components then can be developed in an agile fashion.

Julie Blake from Object Mentor, in her ASWEC industry award paper, 'Gathering the Right Requirements,' two years ago in Melbourne advised 'matching the process to the project.' Too many practitioners dismiss the reality that requirements engineering, architecture and test frameworks are vital to the success of non-trivial projects and complex systems.

The report Challenges of Complex IT Projects by the British Computer Society and The Royal Academy of Engineering goes straight to the point of the many problems that beset complex IT projects:

"There is a broad reluctance to accept that complex IT projects have many similarities with major engineering projects and would benefit from greater application of well established engineering and project management procedures. For example, the importance of risk management is poorly understood and the significance of systems architecture is not appreciated."

There are bundles of issues in industry that need to be resolved to enable the success of large-scale distributed and concurrent computing.

As Ian Sommerville pointed out in his keynote at last years ASWEC in Perth, construction by configuration and integration of third-party and legacy systems pose significant, open research questions. He suggested that Australia could take leadership in this area and why not?

Such a research program would by necessity be of a longer time frame than industry desires for project delivery. However, strategic IT initiatives include programs of work that span several years so a realignment of expectations may not be out of the question.

The greatest weakness of ASWEC is lack of strong engagement with a cross section of industry. Our challenge is to attract their sustained participation in future conferences by becoming more relevant to the problems they face.

The future of ASWEC will reflect the future of software engineering in this country. If we blur our focus towards programming then ASWEC will flounder without a clear audience. If stakeholders in ASWEC build a vision for software engineering then industry will benefit and the conference will flourish.

Comments from the panel members covered a range of opinions and perceptions about ASWEC in relation to their own priorities:

• How does Agile fit into the complex systems development life-cycle.
• Interdisciplinary teams, eg. safety and security; professionalisation, including conferences.
• Better value for DMO to have co-location.
• ASWEC is a serious research conference in SE - not only that, it's more.
• It's a broad conference, SE is a broad discipline, SWEBOK has broad knowledge areas.
• Academics and industry - must be serious research to bring academics out of "ivory tower."
• ASWEC is increasingly international.
• Lack of students - not selling benefits of SE adequately.
• Agile is good but please, please don't allow it/use it as an excuse for lack of discipline.
• ASWEC covers whole range of activities, the breadth of engineering.
• ERA (Excellence in Research Australia) - journals and conference ranked in international standing; ASWEC and other Australian conferences ranked B but unis only fund A or A+ ranking.
• "Love, passion and time" in terms of organisation.
• Caution changing and impact of changes.
• "ASWEC, it's better than nothing." Where would we be?
• Venue for Australasian scholars; nursery for new researchers.
• SE journals and funding? Engineering has difficulty in general with funding (eg. ARC) compared to science disciplines.
  

The DMO (Defence Materiel Organisation) which has a vision to "become the leading engineering and project management organisation," is sponsoring the formation of the Improving Software and Systems Engineering Conference (ISSEC) . The vision of ISSEC is a "commitment to the advancement of integrating and improving systems and software engineering best practice for the engineering profession and industry."