Quote of the Day
I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.
Sophocles
Blog Notes: June 2011
After starting off on a promising note, blog readership dropped dramatically after the first week, a record blog low over the past year, including record low daily totals. International readership was negligible; my German readers numbered well over my Danish runners up, but to provide context, my daily views a year ago from Denmark exceeded my monthly readership from Germany. I do not know what explains the readership drops; there could be process or content issues (say, more libertarian stances, increasing criticisms on Fox News or Palin and Bachmann). I will continue to provide unique commentaries, regardless of readership; sometimes I may challenge your point of view, other times you will find a different, concurring opinion.
Some features, like my Political Humor segment, will be published on a variable basis, depending on major stories or published late night jokes deserving an ad lib. I recently discontinued my regular Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident update series; I will likely publish occasional updates and reserve the right to reestablish more regular publication as circumstances warrant. I also recently discontinued the daily publication of my Harmon Killebrew tribute series through the end of the season; I didn't find enough fresh material of suitable quality to sustain the series. Instead I will publish the tribute segment on an occasional basis.
The Glenn Beck Fox News Channel Show Done: Thumbs UP!
Anyone who has ever watched a Glenn Beck program knows that Beck is a little too full of himself. And that was part of the problem. We have entirely different styles. It is true that I integrate personal experiences into the blog which on surface looks similar in nature. But, at least at the current time, I don't earn a penny from this blog. I'm not selling books, website memberships, etc. I've never gotten a professional gig through this blog. I'm not singling out people, companies or clients--and part of the reason I'm doing that is because I'm far more interested in the global issue.
Earlier this week I described a failed ERP upgrade project almost 10 years ago at a City of Chicago agency. I was unfairly victimized and scapegoated under circumstances that would horrify anyone reading this post; people like me who are the best at what they do and deliver results will attract bitter, brutal opposition for whatever reason--fear of change, loss of influence, professional jealousy, etc. I am not going to use this space to vent at particular individuals. Let me go into a few more details here: A well-known computing company had outsourcing contracts with the City of Chicago and also at least one project through a separate consulting unit. I have dealt with a number of project managers over the years, the vast majority of which, despite earned credentials, were grossly incompetent--and I'm not venting here. I've taught system life cycles for years.
I'll give a couple of simply examples from my final project at Big Blue where I migrated the ERP system for a well-known tax service company. The subsidiary was based on a business model which assumed a cookie-cutter ERP system. The tax service company had previously engaged a well-known consulting company to maintain the system. This consulting company basically had what I would describe as a poison pill strategy--they have not implemented a single patch update, they were using unconventional (to Oracle) mountpoints, and they were using a proprietary cloning procedure (while our outsource DBA's in India could only handle Oracle's standard Rapid Clone methodology). My boss and his sales associates had never validated from get-go that the client's configuration for the cookie-cutter business model. My boss didn't want to accept the database until they did tons of patches; the client wanted me to do the patching (i.e., so IBM would assume the risk of changes to their production environment, a non-starter for my boss). We had separate system operations teams that did not correctly configure server storage under their own standard (the system crashed one day and was unavailable for another) and did not configure networking correctly between servers and tape drives (I had to clone across servers and I was seeing megabytes versus gigabytes). I initially had to wait for production server space in Phoenix, and during the 6-weeks I was working in the test environment, the PM never acquired the storage just before go-live. I found out almost by accident from conversations with the client that they used security software to do a single bank download every day that had to be implemented; totally unknown to the PM, the security software was not on Big Blue's standard server configuration, which meant that I had to push this special request through the bureaucracy. Then, to add icing to the cake, I worked around the clock to make the system available for my techno-functional colleague by noon on Saturday; it wasn't until then that he even tested to see if he could connect to the client system from off-site. He refused to call the client or go directly to work at the client facility to get access. I had personally asked this gentleman 2 or 3 times earlier that week if he had tested his connection and/or set up a backup plan to work at the facility. He decided "it can wait until Monday". WELCOME TO MY WORLD. I don't know what the devil the PM was doing other than generating fancy charts with no bearing to the reality of the project. I couldn't blackbox anything; I was the de facto project manager. Even when I told the PM, it wasn't getting done. If I didn't make the calls and jawbone the personnel, it didn't get done. Believe me, when you have to push these things at the last minute, you will get political pushback. It's not a matter of "what you said but how you said it"; it has to do with managers being caught not enforcing their own standards, not doing their jobs. There's no way to sugarcoat that.
Going back to that Chicago project, the client IT manager never once asked for my input. And I believe the city agency failed to hold their vendor accountable on big picture terms. Let me explain: there were several categories or stages of the upgrade process from Oracle--so you have 2 test upgrade cycles during the 12 weeks. Let's just say for simplification there were 7 categories and they all take the same time. By week 4 you have to have a database closed up for the upgrade and the upgrade process at least from a technology stack process ready to run upgrade application scripts on an higher-version database. If you are not running upgrade scripts by week 5, you are in trouble. In this case I described earlier, when I finally took over as lead project DBA, they had only gotten to category 2 (at most) after 6 weeks. They hadn't closed off the database for upgrade, they hadn't upgraded the database itself (a prerequisite to running the application scripts). As to why the client IT manager didn't know about the process. In the meanwhile, the PM is thinking he can do the two-cycle requirement concurrently during the last 6 weeks--at the same time he still hasn't procured auxiliary software to run payroll and he's refusing to put the staff DBA's around the clock to help me--I can't book more than 8 hours. Why the vendor consulting company wasn't holding the PM's feet to the fire, why the client wasn't doing the same, I don't know. The emperor is wearing no clothes.
Ultimately the failure of the project reflected incompetent leadership from the vendor consulting company and the city. The vendor consulting company, in fact, was hiring subcontractors and deliberately misleading the client about their employment status. I've got personal issues with this PM which I won't discuss here, but I will simply say I presented him with a 7-page, single-spaced memo of errors I had personally seen the head project DBA make--before he caused his own database to crash without possible recovery--and I wasn't working with this DBA more than an hour or two daily; God knows what mistakes he made I didn't know about. All I said was--check with the technical management of the consulting company; hire an independent DBA to evaluate what I wrote and to make recommendations. And he didn't do anything with it. I didn't have line authority to do anything.
So, when I look back at these circumstances, I'm really not venting over the fact I was scapegoated by both parties for circumstances they incompetently mismanaged. They have to think in terms of something I've been pointing out in general for government projects--you have to have appropriate milestones and deliverables so you can cut your losses early. Why the IT manager didn't realize there was such a thing as category 4 or category 5 and wasn't demanding a status on what has/hasn't been category 4 or 5--I don't know. I can tell you if I was the IT manager spending thousands of dollars on consultants on an upgrade project, I would know there was a category 4 or 5. I would not settle for garbage-out project plans devoid of any practical significance.
When I was dealing with that project, I wasn't thinking of the organizational political crap. Yes, the PM and his hired DBA subcontractors were grossly incompetent and should have been terminated for cause. What I'm thinking about is the lessons learned over and beyond the project staffing.
Going back to Glenn Beck, one point he made today is how he got a text during the Spiderman event inviting him backstage to meet U2 lead singer Bono. He sort of left it there. I thought maybe he was going to discuss something about aid to Africa or other global initiatives, but it came across to me like a teeny-bopper trying to impress her friends she personally met some singer named Justin Bieber. (I've never listened to this guy sing, but apparently some people think the kid is talented, so I'm just using him as an example.)
Now I have to say, the show was successful, and you can't argument with success. I will say if I had been in Beck's position, I would have gotten at least twice his ratings and 50 times the advertisers. It's the phony "it's not me; you're the one whom makes it happen", it's the constant apocalyptic warnings, it's the constant self-promotion and bragging about ACORN or other investigatory success stories, it's the constant "let's prove I said this or that', etc. Why does he have this compulsion to "prove" he is/was right? (I'm sure he's acting with integrity and showing all the predictions he got wrong... Yeah, right.)
I have a maternal uncle whom simply doesn't argue. He makes his point once. Beck, on the other hand, seems to have a compulsion to prove himself right, to remind other people how prescient he is. It doesn't add anything to the show--all it does is reflect a need for constant public approval, more of a personal defect. A legitimate leader like me doesn't need constant validation; true leaders don't need to take credit for other people, they don't feel a need to engage in personal destruction; they realize if they're doing something innovative, they'll deal with rejection.
Am I being hypocritical or judgmental in this commentary on Beck? I don't think so. I may disagree with him on a few things. I just thought he needed a good editor, tone things down, fewer extended monologues.
As for his subscription website, which apparently kicks off for real after 9/11, I have my doubts, and I will not be a customer. I think he will return to cable some day given his proven ratings.
Blagojevich: Guilty 1+17: Thumbs UP!
As a former Illinois resident who voted against Blagojevich before leaving the area in 2004, I intended to commentate on the long-overdue corruption convictions earlier this week, but I was working on a different project. Three words: RULE OF LAW. The "golden" nature of the Obama seat appointment was obviously a telltale sign of corruption. Blagojevich wanted everyone to know all he did was good old fashioned political dealmaking. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. The very fact that he pointed out that he could appoint himself to the seat--which would be in his self-interest--points out that he saw any deal as relevant to his own interest. Ironically, the self-appointment would have likely worked except for the fact that he was shopping the seat around. In one of the few times Harry Reid made a good decision, he made it clear Blago would not be seated if he did nominate himself; of course, by that time, the appointment was under a cloud of suspicion.
I give the Justice Department credit for taking the risk of a second trial after the holdout juror blocked all but one conviction. The interesting thing in the story cited above was how Blago tried to manipulate votes of the jurors by pandering to their individual tastes. Pathetic!
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Chicago, "Feel". This will be the next to last song in my Chicago series. My next featured group will be ELO.
