Confoundedness (Poll 7)

Poll completion: 08/02/09

--- original post ---

It's time for another poll. Gosh, the last one was September. This shows that I believed in the process progression as we were told by many statements and was not one of the naysayers.

Boeing seems to be exhibiting confoundedness. So people ought not beat on them; it would be like an ER doctor berating a patient even though whatever is ailing the patient was the result of the person's own choice. No, we need to understand the causes and fix things up.

In short, was Boeing biting off more than one can chew, hoping that subcontractors could magically handle what might be intractable problems, dissing their own employees to run after new partners (the old middle-aged syndrome), and much more?

Much of this has been discussed here, will continue to be discussed here, and can serve as a very interesting lesson of what was wrought with the ending of the 20th century. That is, the 21st century will belong to the workers not to the fat cats (in engineering, it's the negative influences coming out of GE and Welch's legacy that got in the way).

Yes, that comment is a tie back into the economic side of engineering.

Why Boeing allowed themselves to maximize the confounding of factors is anyone's guess. Relaxing along all decision axes is very troublesome in safe environments. To do so when risk is not entirely understood (yes, you guys - Jim M, Scott C, et al - there were people arguing way back about not going whole hog (by what, was the necessity?) after a dream) can have very undesirable consequences.

Lessons learned will abound.

Disclaimer:
Usual poll etiquette assumed; polls are oriented toward information and not mis / dis-information.
- A casual user cannot double vote on any poll. But, there is no guard against intentional duplicate votes by those who know how.
- There is no consistency checking between polls.
- There is no meta-information about who votes or why.
- There is no current correlation between the polls, however the 'role' poll allows some indication of interest.

Remarks:

12/31/2013 -- A popular post in both 2012 and 2013. Ah, how many ways to we confound things? Do you not think that queuing up packages, at the last moment, for deliver somehow would not work (as in, expectations being way out of whack?)?

08/13/2011 -- Added completion; see top of post.

01/19/2011 -- Update1 and Update2. The focus now will be mostly the idiots of economics/finance.

09/09/09 -- We'll need to look at UUUN, as a framework.

09/02/2009 -- Let's face it, folks, undecidability needs to be discussed and adopted in any complex situational setting, especially if computers are involved. Only hubris pushes us to make loud exclamations about what we're going to do in the future.

07/23/2009 -- There have been several critical articles. Here are a couple, from down under, that illustrate the mood swing.

• Is the 787 Dreamliner fiasco more about toxic corporate cultures than a flawed design?
• The 787 Calamity: Lies and evasions continue

Gosh, wonder if Boeing would like to take back 07/08/07 and start over. Yet, there are five issues ought to be addressed. Remember, the underdetermined state is more common than we would like to admit.
Modified: 12/31/2013

Certainly certainty

Our every day events would have, with sufficient insight, enough meat to support very deep and prolonged discussion of the many philosophical issues suggested by the title of this post which will deal with unknown unknowns (the opposite, so to speak).

One could put it this way: we see 20-20 only when looking back. But, guess what? Even that is wrong; we never see 20-20 (assuming that pair of numbers represents some type of perceptual paragon). The problems of the world stem from several things, but cognitive mismatches are a very large one.

Case in point is the manager who has to exhibit some type of optimistic view (he or she thinks) in order to keep the troops motivated to work hard. "Oh yes," he says "we'll have this thing tested and out the door on time." Without naming names, one just has to go back a couple of years to see this.

As with any new program, we can look at both the process and the product and, of course, a lot more. But, let's look at these two. In this particular case, the process was shown to be other than was forecasted, and admitted to. Now, that in itself is not an issue, as who does not daily handle knowns and unknowns (see above). How these are handled will tell a lot about how the day develops. Being aware and able to handle curves as they are thrown by the daily life is an important part of success.

Now, speaking of the product side, there have been tests to date that have confirmed the thinking that went into functional design, which can be separated from process design. But, more tests are forthcoming which will be visible and of continuing interest. So, expect more comment.

Now, there will be knowns involved with the coming tests, such as those based upon the knowledge acquired by aerospace engineering (and other disciplines) over the years or derived from extrapolations that will be allowed by the tests to date. Of course, there are other sources of knowns.

And, unknown knowns (yes, and known unknowns) would have been handily taken care of by the advances in risk management. We saw this same discipline fail on the process side, but those delay factors may have been more management, and execution, failings rather than that of the planners. After all, the whole framework (on many sides) was new (which was gloriously touted early on). On the product side, there is more science that comes to bear which ought to help the management of this type of uncertainty if given the proper time.

It will be the final class, whose cardinality may be larger than we allow (that is an issue being addressed by truth engineering), that we'll have to watch, namely the unknown unknowns. You see, all along this program there have been mathematical and computational methods used that are more new than not. Just the fact that these have to slide along with advances in computer hardware speaks to that.

So, in a sense, the residue related to risk handling coverage (its incompleteness, if you would) will be a continuing subject of study. Too, some of these issues which can raise the philosophical conundrums do have a way of being unmanageable.

What? Yes, we need to recognize that and reward managers (the engineers already know this) that allow truthful handling of this phenomenon. In short, more of these things are influenced by basic undecidability than has been admitted, to date.

That we have a program with which to review and discuss this topic is something that is too important to just overlook. However, from the outside, there are always limitations in trying to accomplish such analysis.

But, it may be that the emergence of the internet-based information sources will help overcome some of the constraints that were formerly very difficult to surmount.

Remarks:

05/28/2012 -- Can we tell if we're on a limb?

09/14/2010 -- Must and may. Two important concepts.

09/02/2009 -- Lets face it, folks, undecidability needs to be discussed and adopted in any complex situational setting, especially if computers are involved. Only hubris pushes us to make loud exclamations about what we're going to do in the future.

07/14/2009 -- Nope, confounding continues.

05/18/2009 -- Testing in flight is within sight.

Modified: 05/28/2012

One year later

7oops7 isn't quite a year old as the first post was almost September of 2007. The precipitating event is one year. As mentioned earlier, the interests are varied, including truth (as in lack of hubris, for one), engineering, finance, and many others.

On the engineering side, we get this from flightblogger, a Happy Birthday.

Now might be a time to review the past year in terms of releases, forums, and all the discussion. Of course, such analysis will take some time.

The anchor point would be the Release one year ago which talked about rolling out (ostensibly to fly) in seven weeks. Then, one can delta forward and backward from that point and look at who knew what or how (too, who is a cheerleader versus an analyst) there was so much confusion (Some seeds, posted 08/31/07; these have not been looked at since November of 2007 but expect an update).

On the finance side, the intent is still to explain that 'gaming' does not sustain an economy and that any scheme that indentures (as in debt to the fat cats) the populace to the nth generation as we see now is not sustainable.

Earlier, Minsky's ideas were used. Also, tie ins between engineering and finance were mentioned, even to the extent of comparing outsourcing to leveraging. We'll get into that more.

Too, we'll need to look at personal finance which lessons apply as well to smaller business, and perhaps broader.

If we look at E_S_T_A_T_E like this brief overview, we can go a long way toward a better framework. We will look more closely at: Earning, Saving, Tithing, Alms giving, Tax paying, Enjoying the fruits.

One might even say, in that order, as we are allowed to do in the USA. That second activity (Saving) is antithetical to what some have seen as a necessary part of the modern economy. "Alms giving" covers a lot of bases including the current encouragements to volunteer. The final action does not imply in any way that debt is required (beyond some reasonable amount - hey, mortgages were real nice before the madness of the past 10 years) nor does it make judgments about extents of spending, such as McMansions, et al, which will be as much controlled by wisdom (which is a growing set - even with the propensity toward greed) as by resources.

Remarks:

04/07/2012 -- Flightblogger ends, as least, Jon's watch. Some issues raised five years ago are still apropos. The context may have changed a little, yet, perhaps now is time to re-address the themes.

Modified: 04/07/2012

Workmanship

For starters, ‘workmanship’ applies to more than hand (touch) labor; we could talk, as well, about white collar or even capital management, which is supposedly the epitome of everything business. We even expect good workmanship of our medical personnel; one might use due diligence, to boot.

One source of oops does relate to the workmanship issue and the dummying down of work.

One may ask why workmanship may be necessary. NASA has a good take, though the focus is on the effects of bad workmanship on parts. One would think that an OEM, of any sorts, would worry about this; can outsourcing workmanship be guaranteed by inspection only? We’ll have to discuss that more, as evaluation of a product requires some insight into how that product happened to come about.

Dummying down may result from work outsourcing or from process pruning.

In the former case, if the one whose function was outsourced remains to oversee the outsourced work, the role becomes watching and evaluating what comes back in from the outsource. The watching is from a distance usually, unless the outsourcee goofs and needs special attention. The evaluating is of product only, as many times the process evaluation is, or is supposed to be, done by the outsourcee.

In the latter case, some process pruning may be done on stable processes that have been around awhile, when the pruning step has a more complete set of information to work with (we’ll look further at this) than is possible on the first (or even the second) pass of an entirely new process.

Remarks:

01/26/2009 -- Expect more effort in firming up the earned-value (and related) discussions.

12/07/2007 -- The post was partially motivated by observing up-close, on several fronts, the effect of outsourcing in the home-building trades. Coordination at even this local of a level raised issues resulting in effects not seen prior to the outsourcing craze. Then, if one extrapolates from this simple scenario to a mega-outsource as we've seen getting focus, one can begin to why we're in such bad fixes about everywhere one looks. There is a better economic basis than that laid on us by the abstractionists (securitization, as one effect).

Modified: 01/26/2009

Rush job

This is a general comment not particularly mapped to any one event (though links and some comments may appear to have a particular flavor).

We have all seen the types of things related to rushing to meet a deadline, usually as earned-value analysis fails to perform properly. Time for some deliverable starts to run out, things are done more quickly, perhaps corners get cut, the equivalent of the 'triage' of medicine becomes the modus operandi, and so forth.

Of course, in retrospect, after a rushed job a product may very well be okay since only value-added (in the lean terminology) tasks were performed. Others were bypassed. However, such an outcome, assuming that some effort at lean had already been done on the task definitions would essentially be miraculous. So, rushing may very much lead to errors (as probably most can attest).

That some errors only come to fore down the pike is how we learn. Usually, we expect that the cause is looked at and improvements made. Yet, the first pass through any process change ought to be consider experimental and hypothetical (this lesson seems to not have sunk in, in general, as much as will be necessary). Yet, things that only happen now and then need to be even more conditionally handled (say, new airplane program -in which case, the regime of testing in actuality and of correcting faults is the safety net if done correctly) than those things that recur regularly.

Skimping on process (such as, according to the book and not expecting to have to handle any unforeseen contingencies) is not what one would expect to be the prevailing attitude on a major product that is not only of high market value but also is high on the criticality scale (plus having roles related to the human imagination).

Part of it is our fault (yes) for not understanding technology (but how can we without the appropriate information?) and evaluating things on the surface (even though later analysis shows any problems with substance).

However, we also expect those that do and those that have the authority are taking their responsibilities seriously even it it causes schedule slides. But, again that's our fault: for not understanding that foresight is not 20-20; not knowing that any project that spans more than a limited time (whose cardinality may vary by several factors) needs course corrections (a flying metaphor is perfect; would you want to be on a plane where all the instructions for the whole flight were put in as an initial condition and then it just played out like a record? Silly, isn't it?).

Was there a missed chance the past year or so for a particular thing to be a good demonstration of extremely proficient project management? What glory is there for allowing a mindset that does not consider things in a balanced manner? This seems almost like 'look , ma, aren't I wonderful?'.

Let's see, what is one problem? Well, engineers who become managers say that they are 'recovering engineers' (for those manager who are not from engineering ask an engineer to explain). Indeed.

It's a case of a mind going from handling the specifics of nature to the generics of pseudo-control and from performing extremely difficult manipulations of our models of nature to another role that may or may not be as necessary as we think: playing well on the screen (talking heads), smoothing over troubled waters (back slapping), thinking of money (mostly how to keep it in the pocket - albeit that whole abstraction is something that we'll be looking at more closely - abstraction in the sense of what is a 'buck' exactly? - yet, this role can result in accumulations that could be considered obscene), worrying more about surface issues rather than substance (some might call this air brushing), and much more (oh, I forgot, decider).

Management may rule and control employees; they have not succeeded in taming nature. Also, not many have bridged well the ontologies that exist between those who are involved with the 'real' plus their lower-level managers who have a good sense of what's real and those who are in the highly abstracted world of the executive. Earned-value determination requires more than an accounting overview.

In the realm of technology, we will need to get management (and decisions) to more of an science/engineering stance than we see now; the computer will help; yet, the human element will still be a strong factor (and engineers are mostly of nerdish variety, many mindsets think - yet, how to get a better operational balance is still in the works, systems engineering is one of the new pegs); truth engineering needs attention; and so forth.

Yet, in the realm of imagination (motivation, etc.), which is a tremendous human trait, we may not get beyond the art (which insightful management strives to be very effective in) despite our best efforts to engineer the thing (in itself). Hence, expect that management will continue. Besides, the roles connected to management may be a necessity (they are never anywhere near sufficiency).

As one columnist noted recently, managers need to be leaders, rather than pirates, in order to help us through the complexities that we face.

Remarks:

01/19/2011 -- Update1 and Update2. The focus now will be mostly the idiots of economics/finance.

09/02/2009 -- Lean assumes a current framework which can be improved. That the process is still effective during the change can be checked easily. However, if it is not still effective or we do not have a stable framework, then we were, by necessity, in the undecidable state.

07/14/2009 -- Nope, confounding continues.

01/28/2009 -- Earned value issues continue to be of interest.

11/01/2008 -- Much has happened with regard to the schedule, the suppliers, and more. Boeing announced some insights about its 787 planning. Before that, the idiocy of a truncated (abbreviated) test cycle was changed.

Reminder: at this point last year (we can pinpoint the specific dates), there was still some talk about delivering in May 2008.

Modified: 01/19/2011

Cramming for the exam

There is always a disparity between what management might wish and hope to accomplish and what engineers and builders can actually do to produce a viable product. Therefore, we rely heavily on tests to close the gap (one attempt at empiricism). But, the emphasis has to be on doing the work and ensuring that the product is safe.

Introducing systems engineering and advanced computer systems might help but do not remove the fact that we do not have 20-20 foresight.

Getting to a point where the schedule is without a buffer is troublesome since the schedule can be adjusted at several points (in fact, advanced project management might argue that it 'ought' to be) thereby showing some insight to the problems that have encountered (assuming that they can be discussed).

A test situation of a major product is much more than just cramming for a final exam.

Remarks:

08/01/2013 -- Ben cannot unwind or taper down; he has too many Doves. We'll have to get back to the king thing (yes, the divine rights of the CEO, new royalty, in other words) and dampening of these types by a new outlook (Magna-Carta'ísh).

05/25/2011 -- Such as, lemons problem, dark pools, ... Oh, so much to look at! Does the idiocy have any limit?

01/19/2011 -- Update1 and Update2. The focus now will be mostly the idiots of economics/finance.

09/02/2009 -- Lets face it, folks, undecidability needs to be discussed and adopted in any complex situational setting, especially if computers are involved. Only hubris pushes us to make loud exclamations about what we're going to do in the future.

07/14/2009 -- Nope, confounding continues.

01/28/2009 -- Earned value issues continue to be of interest.

11/01/2008 -- Much has happened with regard to the schedule, the suppliers, and more. Boeing announced some insights about its 787 planning. Before that, the idiocy of a truncated (abbreviated) test cycle was changed.

Reminder: at this point last year (we can pinpoint the specific dates), there was still some talk about delivering in May 2008.

Modified: 08/01/2013