Date: June 6, 1996 Time: 07:15
From: Jerry Lawson
ITT Hartford Insurance Group
(203) 547-2960 jlawson AT itthartford DOT com
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Before I get down to the serious stuff, let me relate a small piece of trivia
Before I get down to the serious stuff, let me relate a small piece of trivia
from our office. Seems that someone in the business area decided that it
would be great to use our e-mail system to send a file to our London (as in
England) office. This small file was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20
Megabytes (nobody is quite sure how big it is) and the line from the US to the
UK is 9.6 baud. The transmission (with retires and all that good stuff)
apparently took something like 36 hours, and completely paralyzed our e-mail i
nternally. Apparently the only thing that got out of here in the last 2 days
was my posting to the list server, and when I finally got inbound mail last
night, there were 68 items for me - most of them still unread! However I did
read the ones that were responding to my original post - at least 20% of my
mail from yesterday.
Enough of the humor. Let's set some context here. First, my original note
was only posted to the ADSM-R requirements server. Someone along the line did
me the "favor" of reposting it to the ADSM-L server. While that did indeed
get the discussion going (since there are about 5 times as many people on the
"L" server, it was not entirely a good idea, since my note did not mention the
server name in it, and I am well aware that IBM listens to the "L" server - in
fact I depend on that happening. In the future, if you do something like
this, take ownership of what you did.
Please, all of you IBMers, accept whatever apology I can extend to you - I
know you listen, and react to what happens on the ADSM-L server. Your help
has been tremendous to me and to all of the others that post to the "L"
server. I am sorry someone re-posted my note and did not (at least I didn't
see it) say that they had copies it and reposted it.
My original note was posted to the "R" server, and it's subscribers. Let me
stop here and add some additional context. Those people that know me in
person are probably aware that I was a ribbon wearer at GUIDE for 10 years,
starting out as a Requirements Coordinator in the JES3 project, before moving
upward. (I would still be attending and volunteering at GUIDE, had it not
been for my management re-prioritizing my time.) All that aside, I know how
the requirements process works, and I know how the program is "advertised" to
work. I have gotten cynical in my old age (at least when it comes to
requirements) and I agree wholeheartedly with the IBMer who once told me that
the requirements process, as practiced by GUIDE and SHARE (since the process
is the same) is broken by design.
Time-out for a commercial. Having offended most of IBM with that last
statement, let me also state clearly and for the record, that ADSM is the ONLY
exception to that statement I can think of. The ADSM team has been
exceptional in their response to requirements; They have been the ONLY area
that I can think of within IBM that has consistently responded to the
requirements of the user community in a timely (extremely) manner. You are to
be commended on your response and should be used as a model to the rest of
IBM. In large part, I think that is because that you do things like listen to
these list servers, the CompuServe forum, and other similar places besides the
requirements process. And it would seem to me that less than half of the the
1500 requirements that are in your database came through GUIDE or SHARE.
Now, at this point, I hope you can begin to see my concern, and why I posted
the original note, to the "R" server. I was told that the "R" server was
unofficial, and was not monitored. The original intent was to provide a forum
for requirements discussion, as opposed to the usage questions that are
submitted to the "L" server. (And I want to thank Martha and Marist
University for providing the resources to do both.) If the ADSM developers
are no longer listening to the "R" server, I was concerned that corporate
culture was indeed contagious, and that the ADSM developers were succumbing to
the same slow (or no) response problems that affect the rest of the
requirements that are submitted through GUIDE and SHARE.
OK, right now you're probably saying "Why does this crackpot think the process
doesn't work? I submit my requirements. They get a response from IBM. What
more does he want?" That's is - if you got this far, and haven't hit the
delete key already! :-)
First in the 4 years I was requirements coordinator for JES3 (in the
mid-1980's, before the mainframe died), better than 95% of the requirements
submitted came back with a response of "Long Range Consideration" on them,
which was a euphemism for "Not in your lifetime". Now before you start in and
say, but that's JES3 and they are being reduced, etc. let me add that
experiences with MVS and TSO requirements were equally as disappointing. Now
during the 10 years I attended (ending in 1994), there was what seemed to be a
never-ending committee on requirements processing, and how it could be
improved. At times this was a joint committee, and at times it was not, and
most if not all of the people working on it were good, intelligent people with
the best interests of everyone at heart. But in the long term it was still a
committee, and I believe they invented the proverbial "camel". After one long
stretch, all that had been announced was that they changed the response codes.
One of them was "Good idea, but...."
But the worst part was coming up with a program for us to use to "automate"
the process. This now means that I have to have the "current" version
(whatever that is, and who knows where I get it) to submit a requirement. I
suggest that this makes it more difficult to submit requirements, not easier.
For one thing, it's no longer a piece of paper that can get mailed around,
copied and given to customers or users inside my company - it's a software
program, with data files coming out that have to be tracked. I have never had
someone send me a diskette with the requirements program on it. I can't tell
you how many (hundred) of the old forms I got in 10 years. Additionally, it
forces one to either attend a user group, or to impose on a friend who does go
to submit the requirements. And if you aren't in attendance at the discussion
process, then there's a good chance that no one can speak (or should I say
passionately speak) on a particular requirement's behalf. If there is any
confusion in the wording, the requirement is likely to be misread, misinterpre
ted, misunderstood, and likely rejected unfairly. Now I know that
requirements should be written in a clean and concise manner, but we all are
not Steve King or Tom Clancy when it comes to writing. And lastly, let's not
forget that not every company attends or knows someone who attends, or even
knows about GUIDE and SHARE. The people involved in these groups (and
remember this includes ME), get tied up with the importance of what they are
doing (and it is important), but they forget that not everyone can partake of
the benefits of the user groups.
And then there are the local account teams. I don't know about you, but my
local storage rep is being pulled so many ways, trying to cover so many areas,
that I wonder if his wife ever sees him. And while he is very dedicated and
very knowledgeable, (and will read this, and know that I said this) he is
being pulled too many ways for me to want to add additional work via PASRs (or
whatever they are called today). I don't see him much, because we are up,
running, and self sufficient, and he needs to dedicate his time to other custo
mers. And that's the way I expect it to be (and it should be, too). Also I
have been told that individual submissions from companies get a very low
priority, since they have only one voice behind them.
OK - this is long enough, what does Jerry Really Want? :-((((
As someone in one of the responses said "What we need is a way to submit
requirements via the Internet". The "R" list, IMHO was a great step towards
achieving that objective. As I have watched and participated in this forum, I
felt that it was exactly on point as to what we needed - a voice to discuss
what is required, where anyone who had access could say what they felt,
without having to attend an arbitrary meeting at some distant point and at
usually great expense. The ADSM development team's policy of not getting
actively involved in the discussions (except to provide a gentle suggestion)
was also very appropriate. But we also need some sort of assurance that the
discussions made here have some sort of long term effect - and don't disappear
when I power off my machine. That, again, is why I became so concerned when I
was told that the "R" list was not being monitored, and that this was a
conscious decision of the IBM management. Let's take the time and make this
process work!
Enough already. If you don't think I am passionate enough about this, I would
like to add that in the middle of this editorializing, I had an appointment
with the local Red Cross blood drive. When I went down there my blood
pressure was up 15 points - I almost was rejected!!!
Again. my apologies to all of the IBMers who regularly respond the "L" list -
Greg, Andy, Cindy, Barry, Paul, and many more - I know you do it, and I
appreciate all of the work that you do - it is an instrumental part of making
ADSM the best backup product on the market. I am just sorry that someone saw
fit to submit my original question to the "R" list to the "L" list without
qualifying that - it was indeed out of context. And unfortunately, my e-mail
gateway discards all of the routing headers, so I cannot see any trail of who
sent what - but that's another story.
Thanks for listening. And if you have read this far, and you have subscribed
to both lists, please throw away the other one of these notes that you get
because I will post this to both lists, just in case there are some people who
don't subscribe to both.
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Jerry Lawson
ITT Hartford Insurance Group
jlawson AT itthartford DOT com
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