Posts by Laura Kerr 260 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Apr 2015
"We need to move away from the paternalistic, clinician-led culture, to using a targeted mix of partnership approaches and encouraging personal responsibility for health where appropriate."
What exactly is wrong with a 'clinician-led culture' in healthcare? Call me old-fashioned, but when I need healthcare, I think I'll take the advice of a doctor over a beancounter any day of the week.
@ Doctor Syntax
Yup. And for bonus points, a lot of those requirements themselves have a high degree of mutual incompatibility. That means a Decision Has To Be Made so les grandes fromages hastily reconvene. This time, without the minion present, the atmosphere is a little more confrontational:
GF1: I want these changes to go in asap.
GF2: These ones have a higher degree of business need.
GF3: This third lot also needs to go in. And they aren't compatible with the first lot.
GF1: I want these in immediately. I've promised the Minister.
GF2: Hey, hang on. These ones are important, too.
GF3. I want doesn't get.
GF1: Do you know who I am?
GF2: I want these changes implemented immediately. If that doesn't happen, I'll scream and scream and scream until I'm sick.
GF3: Yeah, well my dad's bigger than your dad.
..etc. Eventually the requirements backed by the loudest shouter are somehow squeezed on top of the live system. No regression tests can be done, as testing was one of the first corners to be cut, so a few happy path scenarios are run and the most glaring faults hastily corrected. The Go / No Go meeting spends most of its allotted time whittling down the remaining list of bugs until the defect mask's met.
It goes live, falls over and is plastered with hot fixes until it only needs rebooting once a day.
Then rinse, squabble and repeat until end of contract.
Gubbmint IT projects have their own playbook, and it's almost the direct opposite of how sane development works. In the real world, you work out what the website has to do, make the best estimates of throughput you can, add in some contingency and ensure the architecture is scalable, design the interfaces for the payment, warehousing and transport systems, implement a decent security layer and separation of concerns and so on. Then, with a fairly comprehensive set of requirements, off you go.
Now in gubbmint, first of all, a minister bumps their gums in public about how the new shiny will go live on date X. Just to emphasise the importance, they do so in the House of Commons, which means it's recorded in Hansard. Then they pass it on to their minions, who giggle 'bananaaaa' and set up a Senior Manglement Team, a Steering Committee, a Stakeholder Forum, a Supplier Management Review Group and a Procurement Executive. This all takes time to put together - must get this right, old boy, as it's a Ministerial commitment, don't y'know - so some time is taken up with assigning people, synchronising diaries and debating terms of reference for each group. Then it goes up to the Minister for approval. Once that's been obtained The Plan is assembled using the Great Hammer of Microsoft Project.
Next step is to Gather All Ye Requirements. As all stakeholders must be consulted, a few months are burnedspent on workshops that rapidly turn into either meandering debates or turf wars. Technology allows these to be done via con-calls so that half the attendees dial in, go on mute and play on Facebook, while half the rest are mumblers who can't express themselves clearly.
With the workshops concluded, the next step is to assemble a set of requirements that make the Chequers Brexit plan look like a model of clarity. But hey, there are the requirements, so they're cut 'n' pasted into a tender document. In order a provide full transparency, a different font is used, and redacted text is included.
Off they go to tender and a couple of months later, a shortlist of bidders is invited to present their solutions. While all les grandes fromages are being seduced by the glittering PowerPoint, the minion assigned to monitor The Plan opens it one morning and cries "bananaaa!" in horror as the dates all turn red. Off they go to raise the alarm. Les grandes fromages yell at the minion for speaking truth to power and then convey an emergency meeting to review the situation. As it's so urgent, people are flown in business-class from all over the country. A locked-doors session then ensues.
GF1: How did we get to this point?
GF2: It's just not acceptable.
Minion: We fixed the end date and we've used up a lot of time in requirements gathering.
GF3: Why didn't you tell us before now? For God's sake.
Minion: I did. You all get highlight reports each week.
GF1: Oh, is that what they were. Well, really. You should have escalated it.
GF2: Absolutely. It's just not acceptable.
Minion: I did. You asked me to refer it to the Steering Committee.
GF3: They haven't met for some time. Pressures of other work, it seems.
Minion: Nobody told me that.
GF1: Well, what are we going to do? Have you got any bright ideas?
GF2. You'd better come up with something. It's just not acceptable.
Minion: We might be able to deliver a Minimum Viable Product if we cut a few corners.
GF3: What on earth is a Minimum Viable Product?
Minion: It's usually shortened to MVP.
GF1: Oh, MVP. Well, why didn't you say so? Best get on with it then.
GF2: Agreed. The current situation is just not acceptable.
Minion: Bananaaa!
GF3: OK, off you go then.
The meeting breaks up and eventually an MVP is delivered six months late by a DevOps team using Agile methodology. However, as all the budget's been used up, the MVP becomes the end product.
That's how you piss 350 million up the wall. Those stakeholder workshops need attendees and options papers don't write themselves. But hey, why should the GFs care? They're sitting pretty under the shelter of the magic money tree.
I can't get rid of the thought of Darth Mayder and Arlene duetting this:
It's on and off and on again
Going on and then
Taking all I got again
Bleeding me leaving me dry
You're hanging on for what you can
Dragging out the pain
Taking all I give again
Fakin' it, making me cry
"And in line with the "testing" of the Universal Credit system they will be the simplest cases with the smallest number of transactions to the fewest number of countries."
Hey, I'm sure they'll at least have done a thorough stress test, where the devs all log in simultaneously one Friday afternoon and confirm that the system comes up.
"include anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes, as well as support for specific US policies favorable to Iran, such as the US-Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA)"
iranian support doubleplusungood verging crimethink. kerr oldthinker, unbellyfeels TrumpSoc, values ownlife unvalues prolefeed. kerr uncrimestop, unblackwhite. send joycamp speedful.
"When I buy a car, I want one that doesn't have any connection to the bloody Internet."
I agree with you - I can see no benefit at all in having my car spew data all over tinterwebz.
You might end up having to go retro in a few years, though. I have a Land Rover, but it's a Defender. Apart from the ECU, the only electronic gubbins it has are the immobiliser and tracker. A nice big chunky metal steering wheel cover and a Rat Trap transmission lock help keep it safe. Low-tech, analogue and effective. And that's how I like it.
Hang on a tick. You could try crossing an air-gapped network by infecting a software package destined for it before it's taken across the gap, but then what?
Basic security (granted, that's a bit of an assumption) would require that you check everything coming in from outside, even a vendor's network. A simple checksum calculation would show if a package has been tampered with. For that to pass, the correct checksum would have to be replaced by that of the compromised package.
OK, that might be achievable. But once you've installed your malware, how do you pass commands to it?
TBH, this reads like Cold War reds under the bed. Time to set up camp at Greenham Common again?
"both departments appear optimistic that they can deliver what's required to be ready for March 2019, whatever the outcome of the negotiations."
That one statement has lightened my day. Even if - IF - the 30th September deadline for a deal is met, AND it gets quickly ratified by all 27 EU members, there will be something like three or four months to 'deliver what's required.' We all know where that will end - and even if the 'implementation period' is used to cobble something together, it'll still go down to the wire and a be a bag of spanners when it goes live.
Unless of course 'what's required' consists solely of slideware festooned with meaningless stats and management speak, in which case there's plenty of time for that.
Warning to all Oxford Classics graduates - there's a reality missile heading your way. I just hope Holyrood can pull Scotland back from the brink.
Well, not quite. The parcel trolley sounds like a Good Thing.
But a good BOFH could have a ball with a building full of IoT tat. After hardening implementing security, he could have IoT wireless speakers acting as bugs, IoT fridges altering their temperature to cultivate salmonella, IoT copiers pumping out full-colour pron, IoT coffee machines emitting superheated steam while ordering extra supplies for Mission Control's own machine, IoT light switches plunging the room into darkness whenever the Boss opens his clueless yap, IoT heating controls turning room temperatures up to Incinerate and IoT door locks keeping the occupants of that room confined to the oven. Plus an IoT car park shutter that guillotines the Boss' new pride and joy.
Yup, definite potential.
"So that One mistake was to be dismissive of the IJN. In the inital conflict of the Second World War. The Pacific Theater was the only lagitimate one for the USA to be envolved in."
Um... you are aware that Hitler declared war on the US a couple of days after Pearl Harbor, aren't you?
My turn to 'fess up - a long time ago, in a century far, far away, I was testing a middleware system that was supposed to receive text files, send them on to somewhere and record the file name in its audit database.
Yawn, boring stuff. But the thing was having a real hissy fit and just would not work, or log anything to say why. I thought it must be some sort of edge condition, so prepared a big batch of text files, named text1, text2 and so on, all the way up to text100. Then, in a flippant moment, I added one called 'bollocks'.
Guess which one worked.
" You go to bed on the plane like you would in a hotel room, but you wake up at destination, the idea behind London->Scotland sleeper trains of the past."
Not in the past at all - the Caledonian Sleeper service is still very much alive. I see it on the way to Euston most mornings.
Every two weeks, a new edge-of-your-seat thrill, as Team A's new front end release breaks Team B's business logic, so Team B has to implement a fix that breaks Team C's database. That means Team C has to deploy a hotfix that renders Team A's front end unusable, so Team A deploys a fix that locks up Team B's code.
Team B patches the problem and introduces a few security holes as a bonus, causing Team C to throw a hissy fit because the patching and fixes now allow SQL injection, so a bunfight ensues over whose responsibility it is to harden security.
Then external security consultants take a look at the design and promptly flatten it with a simple pen test. Next, the pen test report detailing all the holes is deemed as needed no further action by a suit who thinks SQL injection is a new DVD release, while the poor sods administering the system keep it cobbled together with a collection of cron jobs running fifty-three scripts written in seven different languages.
Then when the inevitable data theft occurs, the aforementioned sods catch the heat for it.
I think we need a Private Fraser 'we're doomed' icon.
"it being invoked on Zuk would be a reason for a major celebration."
I can't stand the smug little git, but there's one wee problem - we can't sling him in chokey unless we get him over here in the first place. We're a bit short of gunboats these days, so unless he comes voluntarily there's not much HMG can do, other than block Facebook in the UK, which would be political suicide, or declare him persona non grata, which isn't going to worry him that much. He'll probably throw his UK minions to the wolves, though.
"For example, making Simon's alter ego a female would tick a huge box with the BBC in terms of representing women in central roles, without seriously impacting on the story lines."
Very true, but - I spent a long time trying that out, and it just didn't work; as Steven is subordinate to Simon, it was difficult to get anywhere without overtones of sexism and bullying creeping in. Same with the KZEEEERT - the stories worked better with that strictly rationed. There are other outbreaks of violence to compensate, though :-)
There is a female central role, and she's on the same level as Simon. Similar attitude to corporate silliness too, which makes for a good relationship. She's just as intimidating as Simon, but in a different way.
I've been trying to sell a TV series based on the BOFH for ages now - after getting the OK from Simon to draw on his stuff, I completed seven scripts and tried to get production companies interested. I even managed to get a couple of celebrity endorsements, including one from the actor who would be the ideal Simon.
And after spending a fortune on postage I ended up with enough rejection letters to wallpaper my lavatory. I did get a couple of nibbles along the way but no bites. I got the impression that commissioning suits didn't like the idea of a series where manglement were the butt of the jokes.
About that time, a few life issues intervened and I put it on the back burner. But I'm thinking that I should try again. I've got enough material and ideas for about 24 episodes, plus a Christmas special.
Sounds like me. I suffer from GAS as much as the next bassist, but most of my toys - amps, effects pedals and whatnot - are decidedly analogue, are tied together with electric string and have controls you either twist or stamp on to make a noise.
In a weak moment, I bought a Boss digital mini-studio, and I find it a royal pain in the arse. Admittedly, the looping, speed control and recording functions are very good, but I really dislike breaking the rhythm to fiddle about with menus.
Anyway, that's Fender off my shopping list. I prefer Eden kit, anyway.
Oh honestly, the negativity here is ridiculous. It's amazing anything gets done. Not to worry though, our world-class consultants, Churnham and Fleece, have assured us we will hit the deadline. We had an all-day workshop with them the other day at the Dorchester. Jolly good lunch, too. You'd have enjoyed it but space was a little limited, I'm afraid. Perhaps next time.
Look, here's their project plan thingummybob. If you could put your phone down at the back please, and pay attention, you'll see that it's perfectly clear. We have to make sure we recruit the best resource. We've had to tweak it a little to include our response to the PAC report, but the timeline's robust, realistic and achievable.
The DExEU project board meets next week to review the report. They'll produce an action plan and task the project management pool to produce resource profiles for the next phase, which will be signed off by the steering group first week in March. No, the working steering group, not the Ministerial one. That meets in April and provided they sign off, we can start recruiting in May, once the budget's been approved. Yes, yes, I know it takes three months to put people in place, but we should be up and running by the end of August. Oh, all right, the second week in September. But it's all plain sailing from then on, look.
Establish project management office, one month. Requirements gathering, ten days. Design completed, two weeks. Review cycle four weeks, design sign-off third week in December, but we've allowed for it slipping to January, because of Christmas. Development will be three Agile sprints of two weeks each, plus a week of testing. That takes us to the first week in March. We deploy in the middle of March and go live a week before Brexit day.
So I hope that's clear. We've covered all angles, planned in detail and there's plenty of time to deliver. So let's hear no more of this carping, and instead get our shoulders to the wheel and make sure we're all singing off the same hymn sheet. Now get back on your heads.
"There are probably fascinating parallels to be drawn between the EAC and companies such as Facebook or Google, but I leave that as an exercise for people smarter than I."
The end of the East India Company might have some lessons for the future... imposition of a new product on people who were unable to refuse, unsubstantiated rumour being taken as gospel and then a huge outbreak of violence, an equally brutal response from TPTB and when the dust had settled, the EAC had been consigned to history.
But, but... it's the cloud! Everyone else is doing it, so it must be good. And look! Here are some slides prepared by our world-class consultants, Churnham and Fleece, that show how much money we can save. Do pay attention.
Oh, for goodness' sake. I haven't got time to listen to all this technical drivel and scaremongering nonsense about American interference. The Americans are our friends and would never do anything untoward with our information. They told us so.
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