A blueprint for the new is professional

To maintain their power and dominion, information systems pros are going to have to follow a new blueprint for success. While companies are slashing budgets in an effort to become leaner and meaner, end users are increasingly gaining control of applications and systems software. Corporations are responding by decentralizing their large IS staffs.

At the Center for the Study of Data Processing at Washington University in St. Louis, we conducted a national survey – to find out how they are adapting to the changing, decentralized IS environment.

As we talked with IS executives and examined the numbers from the survey, four themes stood out:

• IS jobs are undergoing fundamental changes;

• IS jobs increasingly are at risk;

• IS organizations are becoming more business oriented;

• the responsibility for IS career development is falling increasingly upon the individual.

As IS professionals struggle to forge new identities in this changing environment, adaptability, the ability to direct one's own career, and solid business skills are emerging as essential assets for survival. The ability to adapt to new professional roles is displacing sheer technical talent as the key to career success for IS executives and staffs.

For many in IS, early retirement and layoffs are sources of concern. For some, recent changes threaten their status as keepers of the technical flame. Unwilling to take seriously the growing dispersion and redefinition of information technology, they hold fast to skills that are becoming obsolete. Increasingly, they are becoming professionals at risk. Despite increasing pressure to redefine their jobs, some IS professionals are clinging to technical skills that are no longer relevant.

Making the discovery that hardwon knowledge is now obsolete isn't easy for many. Long the gurus of technology, some IS professionals are finding their own technical expertise lacking. Of the directors who responded to our survey, 12 % indicated that the skills of their staffs were becoming outdated.

What used to be an IS monopoly is becoming a competitive information services market – both inside and outside the corporation – and customers are finding that they can avoid the IS backlog by shopping elsewhere. Endusers, frustrated by MIS procedures and services that they find too slow or too rigid, are taking IS matters into their own hands. Alternatives to slow IS applications development, such as improved off-the-self software and computer aided software engineering, are growing increasingly attractive.

A measure of the decentralization that is occuring is the movement of computing people and dollars outside of IS. Significantly, our respondents identified on average only 64 % of the dollars spent on computing as direct IS budget items, a rough but startling indicator of change, especially when coupled with the fact that 18 % of their IS staffs are working outside the department to support enduser computing. As budgetary control of computing slips away from the IS department, changes in IS roles will become more pro­nounced. As technology moves out into the business functions, business concerns become more important to IS. Traditionally, IS priorities have placed the management of information technology first, and the management of people second. Too often, business has been a distant third. But IS executives are rethinking their priorities, as increased competition forces them to recognize the importance of a business orientation.

COMPUTERS IN SCHOOLS

 

The purpose of having computers in schools is not to teach students how to use them; the value of having and effectively using computers in our classrooms is that they can en­hance academic results. It is wrong to assume that, if computers are not in the schools, then kids won't be able to get jobs in an increasingly computerized world. Learning to use a computer takes no more than a month or so....not 12 years. If our schools are graduat­ing students that are incapable of quickly learning to operate a computer on their own. then they have truly failed. The true benefit of computers is that they can enable our stu­dents to realize the same increase in productivity that has been experienced by the work­ing world as a whole. They can reduce the grunt work from the tasks of learning, which – like the outside world – are researching, writing, organization, analysis and presenta­tion of ideas. By enabling these tasks to be done easily and in more depth, computers can enhance learning.

Although we are beginning to see a few studies of large scale implementations which are successful, the capacity of classroom computing to improve academic results depends on how effectively they are used. The fact that effectiveness studies show somewhat mixed results is a clear warning that we must plan carefully, implement slowly, assess and evaluate thoroughly, clarify the best models, and support our staff. The crux of success lies in the ability of teachers to capitalize on the educational opportunities offered by this new tool. It will take teachers a number of years to move sufficiently up the learning curve to be able to effectively utilize computers in their classes; therefore the public should not expect measurable results to appear rapidly. It will take five to ten years to see material impact. The government must, however, be able at some point to demonstrate to the public that there are clear and measurable results over time, or support will evaporate.

School technology is a "work in process" across the nation. There are not many examples of exemplary classroom computing implementations, which suggest that the task of so doing is significant. Plans tend to do a poor job of goal setting, providing for adequate support, explaining how computers will actually be used, and key frameworks and lesson planning guidance remain undone.

School computers should be used to build and reinforce basic skills, facilitating analysis and presentation of work, providing simulated hands-on experience and enhancing teacher productivity.

The educational community seems to be conflicted over whether drill and practice or project-based ("constructivist") teaching techniques should be the focus of computer as­sisted teaching. There is support in the literature and in at least one large scale imple­mentation for the assertion that drill and practice can improve basic skills. Research on project based or constructivist techniques is less conclusive. It is my opinion that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive and both should be used where appropriate.

Other than spreadsheet, word processing and similar software, there is a general lack of quality software to support educational needs, particularly that suitable for project-based or "constructivist" techniques.

Terms such as global village", "information explosion", "information highway", "vast storehouse of information" and suggestions of access to the collections of the world's maior libraries and museums have combined in the oublic discussion to create unrealistic expectations and make the pressure to hurry the implementation. School computing plans often repeat and attempt to build on these mvths. But educators had best be careful with these mvths.

Intensive staff support and development is critical if classroom computing is to be util­ized and successful. We need training technical and pedagogical support both prior to startup and on a continuous basis thereafter. Most support must be available full time at each school site. This report estimates that there needs to be one full time support person at school sites for every 50 computers; if a high level of dedicated support is not pro­vided, the requisite help will either come from the time of other teachers (often called peer or "underground" support) or computers will simply not be used. To the extent that peer support replaces dedicated staffing, it could have the effect of removing one or two teachers from every elementary school as peers omit their regular duties to help others.

Teacher training should begin one year before they set computers in the classroom. At that time each should receive a laptop with spreadsheet, word processing and other basic software so that they have an opportunity to begin learning on their own. During that year they should prepare a classroom computing plan composed of representative lesson plans showing where computer power will be used. At the end of that year they should be ex­pected to demonstrate basic skills at using computers and justify their plan in order to re­ceive a basic level certification. Teachers should not receive classroom computers until basic certification is earned.

Characteristics of the computer industry itself compound teaching challenges and in­crease the cost of classroom computing and support. These challenges include the pace of technological change, ubiquitous software bugs and hardware instability, and emphasis on marketing of upgrades that compound the learning curve but bring little compensating value added. The cost of installing upgrades over the life of a given hardware setup have been estimated to exceed the cost of the hardware itself. Systems that are unstable and crash frequently are a disincentive for teacher use.

Most plans speak of computer literacy and seem to emphasize teaching students how to use technology rather than using computers to teach while at the same time denying this intent. Basic computer skills can be learned quickly, and furthermore, the pace of tech­nological change assures that skills learned today will be obsolete tomorrow. The purpose of having computers in our schools is to improve academic results.

 

DEVELOPER'S BEST PRACTICES

Programming as a Profession

 

Before civil engineers were licensed, there was a small problem-bridges kept falling down because they were poorly designed or poorly built. Sometimes people died when a bridge fell down; sometimes it just caused inconvenience and cost money to rebuild. However, it eventually become clear that far too many bridge failures were the result of sloppiness or ignorance and were, therefore, avoidable. Eventually, engineering organizations worked with states to create certification programs for engineers and laws that required a licensed civil engineer to sign off on the design and proper construction of every bridge. Today, bridges rarely fail because of bad design or poor construction.

Of course, not all engineers are licensed, because it takes a combination of education, experience, good references from other certified engineers, and the ability to pass tests to become certified. However, because of the law, every bridge project has at least one certified engineer who checks the plans and the quality of construction before the bridge opens for use. Right now, software development is at the same place bridge building was when literally hundreds of bridges were failing each year. Some projects succeed, others fail, but very few succeed because of anything else than a little luck and a great deal of hard work. Software is delivered late, costs more than expected, is loaded with bugs, does not address all the requirements, and consumes the lives of developers stuck working too many hours of overtime far too often.

Software development is horrendously difficult yet somehow a handful of organizations routinely produce quality software on schedule and on budget without heroic amounts of overtime. Software development is a black art and yet a handful of organizations have managed to turn this black art into a repeatable science. If they can do it, why can't everybody?

 

The Art of Programming

I work with software developers on a regular basis and I am often horrified by how little some developers know about the basics of programming. They know their platform, they know their tool, but they have limited knowledge of algorithms, design techniques, and project management. For example, how many of the following computer science terms can you define?

• Loose coupling

• Cohesion

• Interference

• Fifth Normal Form

• Recursion

If you defined all five, you are a fool because one of those terms has nothing to do with computer science. If you defined four, and interference was not one of the four, you get 100 percent. If you got 100 percent, then you are probably among the very small minority of working programmers who are trying to practice software engineering.

Unfortunately, today's very tight labor market is only making the problem worse. Programmers, often with limited talent, experience, and skill, are being offered tons of money to jump ship from shop to shop and project to project. The end result is a market full of people who have no desire to learn about the tools and techniques that change software development into a repeatable process, because there is less demand for superstars in a rational profession. Software tool vendors contribute to the problem by releasing generation after generation of magic bullets that all claim to solve the software crisis. You'd think we would have learned to ignore most of this noise after literally 30 years of magic bullets, but deep down we all want to believe that technology will yet solve the undeniably hard challenges of software development.

Some have suggested that programming is really an art or craft because we still don't understand how to build truly great software in a repeatable way. After all, the argument continues, building a software system of moderate size and complexity is a far bigger undertaking than building something like the Golden Gate Bridge.

The truth of the matter is quite different. Programming is still a craft because we have yet to establish proper college training for programmers. Programming is still a craft because most of the practitioners are too in love with technology and don't bother to keep up with best practices in requirements gathering, design, and project management. Programming is still a craft because many of the people who manage programmers don't realize that there is a whole body of software engineering knowledge available for their use. Programming is still a craft because the people who pay for software development find the whole process mysterious and frightening. I know all this because there are organizations out there practicing software engineering and succeeding on project after project because they do.