Agile Fragile

Having had my technology fad immunisation jab at an early age I am immune to the worst effects of new technology trends.  Agile is a disease that has taken hold in Government.  Like myxomatosis, it was introduced with good intentions to control the population of poor quality IT projects and SIs.  But like Myxy it has some terrible consequences in that the disease used to cure the ill has had terrible side effects.

A new breed of IT person now marches around government.  Its Agile Man.  Confidently armed with the 12 principles it is an approach which has its own manifesto.

This should raise alarm bells.  Agile is like a religion, it has its 12 commandments and its supporters do not question them.  They have faith.  Faith that following the agile path will lead to IT salvation.  They have organised their religion in the form of Cabinet Office's GDS which as far as we can tell is similar to the inquisition.  Sending people in to villages around the country to ensure that the commandments are followed and any signs of heresy squashed.

The other parallel to religion is that the leaders are unable to answer or tolerate questioning on the subject.  Why does our god allow bad things to happen?  Always results in some complex answer that it is our fault and not gods.  Same with agile.  If agile projects go wrong its not because agile has faults or flaws, its because we did not properly follow agile.

Agile will rise like a religion and it will fade like a religion.  There will always be the faithful but in the end, rational answers will not be forthcoming and those who look at it for what it is will get fed up with the inability to have a rational debate and a set of answers with the religious leaders and go find something else to do.

The final parallel is recruitment.  You cannot get a job now unless you are agile thinking.  The need to suspend rational thinking and join the faith is an entry criteria.  If you find yourself inside an organisation and are not agile, you will be sidelined and a new drone found to replace you.

Of course, I jest.  Sort of.  There are clear parallels to be drawn here.  Agile has many positive things going for it and as a tool, if wielded well could achieve some great results.  But blindly applied to every job, especially by those who do not understand it and you will find yourself trying to shoe a horse in a watchmakers workshop with a Hilti gun.  Not much fun for anyone, least of all the horse.

Tech forecast

It is sometimes fun to have a go at forecasting the future especially in technology.  So here is my latest.

The days of the internet in the form we see it today is dead.  Why?  Because of security.  The internet is all but insecurable in its current form and we need to go back to basics.  What will the future be?

It will be client server.  and here is why.

Client server works.  The main reason why it was abandoned for the www was simple.  There were a number of different reasons:

1. The distribution of software was physical.  CD or disk.  Too hard for mass market.
2. The variations of OS and capabilities meant that there were too many variations to test or versions to create.
3. The networks for which client server worked were not fast enough or reliable enough
4. The cost of production was too high

So we invented the web which did some basic things.  But not content with basic things the www has grown and the complexity with it.  The costs of basic transactions to implement on the web has grown and grown.  But all the original reasons to move to www and away from client server?

1. Software distribution is now trivial.  There are a few main OS variations and all have software distribution capability.  Problem sorted.
2. The standardisation of things like Java and .net mean that applications can now be programmed for fewer variations (two would do).  Or pick a camp.  Given the complexity now of browser testing going back to two variations would seem simpler.
3. The internet and connectivity is reliable and fast in a vast majority of places.  Enough for client server.
4. With the cost of web transactions now, the cost of producing applications is probably not that much higher than the web.

Client server would be easier to secure.  Period.

The justification for the www is diminishing, at least for transactions.  Yes, SAAS is still a good way to go but is still leaving the clients exposed to some serious security cracks that papering over simply will not do for much longer.  Either the www gets more serious on security or its back to client server.

MAC OFF

I own multiple Macs.  They are great.  I have no regrets to date.  But maybe the first regret is starting to form.   I was just sent a visio diagram which I need to view.  I do not have a copy of Visio on my Mac so went hunting for a visio .vsd viewer.  And found some.  They vary in capability and range from free to quite high prices.  So far so good.

I downloaded 3 without reading the specs.  Each one refused to install after downloading with a message that said 'Only works on Mac 10.8.  I have Snow Leopard which is 10.6.  Here we go.  Prepare for rant mode.  Engage.

Where should I start.  Snow Leopard is only 4 years old (2009).  It works really well and my Mac has been stable and fast and has had no problems.  Or none that are OS related.  Why are apps now drawing the line at 10.8?   Macs are different to Windows type machines.  They are reliable and the OS is excellent.  They last for years and years and years and this is the reward for paying a little more in the first place.  My Mac has now outlasted 3 generations of Windows machines some of my friends have had.

What is the point in taking one of the best benefits from a Mac and building in obsolescence in this way?  After only 4 years.

I know, I could go an pay some money and spend a few hours upgrading my machine to 10.8 yer yer yer.  But why should I.  Just to give Apple a little more money when the product they have sold me works very well.

Imagine if this was done in the car world!  Your 4 year old car will no longer work after next week unless you pay Ford more money and take it to the garage for an upgrade.

Its a trend which we are all too familiar with.  It is no longer viable to just sell something where the price you pay reflects the quality.  Now you have to provide an ongoing revenue stream for these organisations.  They have to do this because otherwise nobody would buy their upgrade products because ... of yes, there is no need for them.  So the easiest way to get more money from your client base is to sell them pointless upgrades and force them to spend money or lose the right to use what they already have paid for.  This sucks as they would say in the US.

Rant over.  Disengage.

Phew.  I need a coffee after that.

 

Ekman

The truth is hard to come by I suspect when it comes to the press and articles in newspapers, magazines and online media.  The reality of the press only really comes to light when one reads a story about a subject that one knows about.  I have probably ready 5 stories that I know about well enough to be able to say that what is written is biased and misrepresentative, a misunderstanding of the truth or just plain wrong.

What I noted is that the score is 100%.  Of all the things I have read that I have background information on the writing has been wrong 100% of the time.

One article came my way this week on Ekman.  I am a big fan of Paul Ekman and his work.  His work on the FACS (Facial Action Coding System) is fascinating as are his books.  The article was claiming that the use of his approach to the detection of deceit is unscientific and does not work.  Sadly none of this is true.  Or is true but for the wrong reasons.

The article was right.  The method does fail to reliably detect deceit.  That is because the method makes no real claim to deceit detection.  FACS and his methods are focused on emotions not deceit.  When one seeks to deceive one does trigger many emotions.  It is the emotional leakage that the method seeks to identify.  And it does so scientifically.  And it works.  But it is really hard to master.  

So let's be clear.  The method identifies emotions, not deceit.  If someone at an airport displays detectable emotional leakage it is not necessarily deceit.  There are many reasons for emotional leakage many of which are nothing to do with deceit.  One can be stressed, scared of authority, nervous about meeting someone etc etc.  All of which will trigger emotional leakage.  

You can detect emotional leakage but Ekman is clear that to translate this into deceit requires a lot more than just facial movements.

The article is therefore making an over claim that the scientist behind the method did not make in the first place and then states that it is unreliable.

22 hours

Latest news flash from the scientists with more time on their hands than most.

Men who walk 22 hours a week reduce the chances of a stroke by 2/3rds.  What a great statistic.  That's 3 hours a day walking.  For one hour a day the risk only drops by 1/3rd.

My gut feel says that there is a lot more behind this stat than meets the eye.  In summary, exercise is better than no exercise.  Some exercise is better than others.

Personally, I wish I had 3 hours a day to go walking.

These types of statistic fascinate me.  I am very interested in the philosophy of numbers, probability, causality and this stat strikes at the heart of that.  What is this telling us.

On the surface we might judge that it is telling us that if we walk 3 hours a day we are less likely to have a stroke by 2/3rds.  But if that were true it could only be true if I were going to have a stroke in the first place.  If I was never going to have a stroke then the walk will have made no difference.

What is more likely is that when compared to a set of men who did not walk against a set of men who did walk then the ones who walked had less strokes than the ones who did.  One assumes though that the pool of people observed was very large to avoid other factors of culture, age, gender, location etc that might make this truth be caused by other things than the walk.

It may be the case that men who take their health seriously and walk also do other things that mean they are less likely to stroke.  I also suspect that men who take their health seriously at this stage of their life have probably done a good job earlier.

There is another theory that the sample pool is already biased.  The system does not count the numbers of men who did not make it to that age due to earlier deaths for other reasons.

Interpreting statistics with such specificity is a strange thing to do.  Where evidence is based upon some difficult and complex studies with lots of caveats the safest thing to do is to stick with the general advice.  Exercise is better than no exercise, some exercise is better than others.  Take advice for your particular circumstances.

The other factor in this little story is the issue of the conditional.  If you walk for 3 hours then your chances of a stroke reduces by 2/3rds.

But that does not logically mean that if you want to drop your stroke probability by 2/3rds you should walk 3 hours.  A counterfactual is true only when the if then statement occurs.

If a then b is true when a and b are true.  All other combinations of a and b are false.  What this says is that while we can tell truth from a counterfactual condition we cannot interpret any other state from this.  Only that if a is true then b will be true.  We cannot say that if a is not true then b is not true.  That is important.

New policies

This blog is not for public consumption albeit it is public.  But I do not write here for the benefit of others but to record thoughts over time.  Most of my blog entries are focused on issues I see throughout the day or think about during the night when insomnia kicks in.

I have also got a blog entitled 'would the world be better if' where I record some ideas about 'policies' or things that if implemented might make a change.

I have added two further ones today which I will also cover here

The first is rental and the second is loans.  Both of these cover a set of real experiences I have had.

Rent

New legislation should be put in to cover the following

1) If a person is renting a property and has a deposit in deposit protection scheme then the deposit should be deemed to be ok for a new property rental if the tenant wants to move.  This would negate the trapping of tenants into rents which they cannot get out of due to not having deposit money for a new property.  This occurs due to the return of deposits from an old rental agreement taking time (even when done under the new agreement) and new rental agreements needing deposits prior to moving in.

2) Understand the risk that the old deposit may get used to cover issues in the old property it would put the condition that any short falls in deposits caused by these events would be made up or the rental agreement (new) terminated.

3) landlords are not allowed to demand more than normal rent up front.  I.e. you only can ask for the month ahead (as per normal payments) not 2 or 3 months rent in advance.

This should help a lot of people without any major inconvenience to anyone in the market

Loans

This is a real problem I have experienced and a friend has experienced.  The banking sector is in such a mess that stupid decisions are being made along the lines of:

a) Person has a debt of x at percentage interest % very high

b) Person x goes to the bank and shows that they have been making repayments in full on time

c) Person x asks bank to take out a loan to reduce the cost of debt advertised at 2/3rds % very high

d) Bank says no, you cannot afford a loan at that rate and you must stay with your more expensive debt

This has happened now both scenarios where the new loan request is with both a new bank and with the old bank holding the current expensive debt.

So, new law.

If a person with debt of any form who can demonstrate a good repayment history comes to any organisation offering a loan of any form at a lower % rate then it will be illegal to refuse that debt on the grounds of affordability.

I.e. if a you have a loan of £10,000 at 17% and the bank offers loans at 12% for the same amount that bank cannot refuse you the cheaper loan.  This should apply to mortgages, loans, credit cards etc.  

The only condition is that the loan is used to shut down the old loan and not as well as.

Recession clouds lifting?

The news seems to be positive.  The recession is lifting according to press.  The benefits of this are hard to see on the ground.  In the last recession I was lucky enough to be isolated from the effects.  Not so this time with the government cuts directly impacting my revenue and business growth potential.  That is not a complaint, just a reality.  Cuts happen.

It did encourage me to diversify and start up in the private sector and that has got me through to some extent albeit things are tight.  Outside of business the costs of living keep rising.  In order to maintain the business I have had to cut back in the business and that means minimising personal pay for everyone including and starting with myself.

It has enabled me to see the real costs of things and also see what it must be like for those who may not have the opportunity to grow back their business or get a job when things start to improve.  The cost of rents is still growing and even those who say people should move out of expensive rents need to remember that deposits are needed to move.  You do not get back your deposit before you have to pay a new one for a new property.  In essence, it is very easy to get locked into a rent position and have to accept increased rents each year to the tune of minimum 5%.  With energy prices going up at double inflation and the trains likewise I see no let up for those at the poorer end of society.

Work is no longer a route out of poverty is probably one of the scariest statements I have heard in my life.  Take away this incentive, the opportunity and the ability to improve one's life and what is the bottom end of society left with.  Hope is all many people have in difficult times.  Banks ae still not lending, house prices are rising and demand still outstrips supply.

Energy companies are moaning and investors are being heard to say that the energy companies should be left alone for the market to sort itself out.  Really?  The market has not done a good job so far.  Energy supply is simply not keeping up with demand.  So costs rise.  Simples.  The market is operating in that respect but there is a different angle.  A correctly operating market is a financial thing and not a social thing.  It is a point I have made on a number of occasions.  Not everything can and should be boiled down to money.

If markets are taken to the extreme then it will be fine for some people to not be able to afford energy.  Or water?  Or food?  If the supply of a commodity is limited then the price will go up.  If the prices go up enough then it will become a luxury and some people will not have any.  Market operating fine.  Really?

So the question is not whether the market is operating correctly it surely should be whether a critical commodity like water, food or energy should be subject to market conditions.  It can only lead to subsidies.  People at the bottom end of society with no heating in winter due to affordability issues will have to be subsidised which of course means subsidising the energy companies.  At this point the market has failed society.

How far does it have to go before this is dealt with?  How many old people or poor people have to have 1 heater in 1 room before the multi millionaires running the cabinet do something.

Question mark?

I wonder if the use of the question mark after the chairman's response was correct.  or was he asking Andrew Parker if Hazel Blears is one of those threats?

ANDREW PARKER: ... The work we do is addressing directly threats to this country, to our way of life, to this country and to people who live here; and the work we do is proportionately judged against the necessity of protecting against those threats. 

CHAIRMAN: Hazel Blears?