A BULL'S EYE VIEW OF MANAGEMENT AND ENGINEERING INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Anthony G. Oettinger*

"But nowhere is the all-important question asked= What is management going to ask the computer?" ( l )

"They too have succumbed to the love of the abstract, the all-importance of method, the(log,z; for expertise and pseudo-technlcal language."

Prophets of doom are apt to misquote Vannevar Bush's statement that "The investigator is stag- gered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers --many of which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear." (3) They then extrapolate to such shr i l l exaggerations as "The enormous gap in our capacity to store and retrieve information and at the same time meet the demands and responsibilltles in our society has created the most costly and wasteful drain on our resources, which is w~out paralleI in the entire history of mankind."L*;

A milder point of view is reflected in the statement that " I t is certainly not true that the world is about to go to the dogs or to suffocate in i ts information flood unless information pro- cessing is mechanized or otherwise total ly over- hauled. There is, of course, no doubt that infor- mation processing, like any other cgnceivable human act iv i ty, could be improved."(5)

In any case , the problem of scientif ic docu- mentation has!become a very fashionable subject of research, which has i tse l f contributed mighti1~ for better or for worse, to the growth of the formal and informal l iterature° The extent of this contribution may be gauged by browsing through any recent issue of the National Science Foundation=s serial publlcation Current Research and Development in Scientific Documentation.

In contrast , research on management and engineering in format ion systems has been neglectedo To be sure, everybody who is anybody nowadays runs his payro l l on a computer. There is a theory of so r t ing . There is a successful theory and prac- t i ce of such iso la ted business functions as i n - ventory con t ro l , and in areas where l i nea r pro- gramming models are adequate, notably fo r example in the control of the production of petroleum products, a harmonious and f r u i t f u l wedding of operations research and cemputing technique has been consummated.

information about any aspect of their enterprise on which a decision must be made. They have received huge b i l l s for machines, huge b i l l s for programs, masses of unreadable printouts and, when enough honesty and courage could be mustered, some wry jokes about "GIGO," interpreted by trade wits as "Garbage In Garbage Out" or, worsen as "Garbage In Gospel Out°"

Meanwhile, U.S. News and World Report I which the general manager or the chairman of the board is more l ikely to read than the Journal of the ACM, headlines the shriek "Is the Computer Run- ning Wild?" and adds in lead paragraphs of breathless prose=

'=For a dozen years now, computers have been doing amazing th ings .

'People talk about computers that read and write, design airplanes, create music, balance assembly lines - - computers that almost Sthink' for themselves.

,All that, it turns out, is just the start, a rough beginning° '=

For balance, a wi ld-eyed seed of doubt is sown, but only in the next column=

"Questions are being raised= Are computers, even now, get t ing out of hand? Is man f a l l i n g behind in a race with machines of his own creation? And as for the fu ture -- is it r e a l l y to be feared?" (6)

More calmly, a Fortune w r i t e r states that the computer " i s r a d z c a ~ c h a n g i n g business I production methods and the ar t and science of management," but somewhat l a t e r he scores a

Yet a l l is fa r from we l l . M i l i t a r y or i ndus t r i a l management have again and again Seen premised t ime ly , accurate and relevant reports or, be t te r yet , mu l t i - co lo red wa l l -s ized displays with ins tant access to vast stores of recorded

Bellcomm, Inc . , Washington D.C. from Harvard Univers i ty

(On leave

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t e l l i n g po in t , in doing so paying an unmerited compl~nent to the capacity of " the computer"=

"Never before, sure ly , has a s ing le dev~Zce generated in so short a time so many technical papers, pamphlets, a r t i c l es and books; merely tO scan the da i l y f low of new add important in format ion about the computer, to say nothing of the bales of quas i - in format ion about i t t i s beyond the capacity of anything but the computer i t s e l f . Yet only a small m inor i t y of technical experts whol ly understand the machine! the vast major i ty of enl ightened laymen know i t mainly as a kind of mysterious twelve- foot r e f r i g e r a t o r with b l ink ing l i gh ts and whi r r ing tapes= The gu l f of incomprehension between the experts and laymen is doubt- less fa r greater than the gu l f between Christopher Columbus and the savage Indians who knel t to worship him on San Salvador." (7)

To th is he might wel l have added the gu l f between theory and pract ice and a whole host of gulfs separating l i ne management, management s ta f fs operations management, computer makers and sel ler% systems planners, computer programmers and com- puter designers.

The existence of problems has not remained unrecognized and just i f iab le blame has been traded by a l l fact ions concerned. The fo l low ing are typ ica l samples of the c ross f i re of i n d i c t - ments=

I . Management doesn't know what i t l s doing=

"In most companies things went along qu ie t l y whi le the accounting jobs were converted over to a computer. But then someone was impressed by the sophis- t i ca ted contro ls being developed at another company= Inqui ry beganj a committee was set up.

'Here we begin to observe an u t t e r and astonishing incon- sistency in company behavior patterns a l l across our large i ndus t r i a l complexes. Research people were probing in a d i sc ip l i ned s c i e n t i f i c manner at the very edge of manls knowledge, JJ1 such a way as to ca l i b ra te the meaning of each l i t t l e element observed,

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Meanwhile, back on the operat ing s ide, companies behaved in an appa l l tng ly unsophist icated Fashion. Committees of managers were romped, none of whom was r e a l l y educated to the e f fec t computers might have on operat ing cont ro ls° Natura l l y , the programs they voted i n to existence had l i t t l e chance of @chievinq the resul ts top management wanted= In desper- a t ion the committees of ten loaded the machines up wi th anything.~@rrying an impressive t i t l e . " (~)

25 Salesmen are cunning knaves,

"Salesmen have a natural a f f i n i t y fo r bypassing the technic ian and s e l l i n g d i r e c t l y to top management. A f te r a l l , in the f i n a l ana lys is , the top executives are the ones who must be so ld , so why not s ta r t wi th them? And when salesmen deal wi th top managers, they re ly on t r i cky l i t t l e gimmicks which they would not dare to use wi th technic ians.

3.

"One of the most prevalent pract ices has been a demon- s t r a t i on of the great advantages of some device that j us t s i t s and waits for a challenge, whereupon it throws out answers in a f r ac t i on of a second. The imp l i ca t i on is that obviously th is gen ie - l i ke response alone is of tremendous va lue. What the salesman may f a i l to mention is that the preparat ion o6 the question and the handling of the answer cons t i tu te the s t i c k i e s t parts of the problem . . . . Once the device i s placed in the hands of the operat ing man, disen- chantment soon sets i n , fo r he. f inds the machine r e l a t i v e l y use- less . He then faces the dubious choice of running the th ing j us t fo r window dressing or tack l i ng the unthinkable task o f , ~ I l i n g the boss he was wrong.'=~Q/

The computer people have taken the b i t to t h e i r tee th .

,t... A very important po l i cy question comes into view. I t i s one which~one of the data

ret r ievaI people that I know of have grappled with and one which int lmately concerns the legal community, though of course i t is not confined to us. I refer to the fact that i t is a prime pol icy matter to determine what data shall be preserved, and among those that are preserved~ which i t is p o l i t i c in any instance to suffer to be recalled= Data retr ieval experts make the bl ind assumption that data is ipso facto good. And i f this is ascribing to them a naivet8 not many of them possess, then i t is f a i r m I think, to say o f them that they feel t h a t a l l data which are preserved should be in a s t a t e o f i n s t a n t r e c a l l . I t i s the unavowed work ing as- sumption o f i n f o r m a t i o n t h e o r i s t s t h a t i n f o r m a t i o n i s a good i n i t s e l f and t h a t more or more accurate i n f o r - mat ion i s b e t t e r than less or less accurate i n f o r m a t i o n . However, in a s i t u a t i o n i n - v o l v i n 9 c o n f l i c t , i n f o r m a t i o n i s armament. And the paradox o f more and b e t t e r armament q u i c k l y begins to ope ra te . ''~9;' ~

4. Controls over programming ef for ts are lackin~.

"Most lead companies ( in the survey) are aware that the i r computer systems controls are not nearly as effect ive as those applied to s imi lar project-type ac t i v i t i es such as engineering. In par t icu lar , they feel a need to improve the i r a b i l i t y to appraise r e s u l t s from completed systems proJec t s . " ( I O)

5 . Nobody knows what the problem i s :

"F i rs t , (these concept studies) have a l l been conducted recently. Those of us working close to the f i e l d tend to have the impression that the concept of the mi l i ta ry command system has always ex is ted= I t i s i n s t r u c t i v e to observe t h a t such concept s tud ies have been a v a i l a b l e on ly w i t h i n the l a s t th ree yea rs . Too l i t t l e t ime has e lapsed and too l i t t l e exper ience has been accumulated to s a t i s f y our requ i rements f o r

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adequate understanding of the m i l i t a r y command system. There has been, correspondingly, l i t t l e experience from which to develop a body of knowledge and a set of dependable management pr inciples to assure ef fect ive control of the m i l i t a r y command system development process. ''(11)

6 . Therems more to using a computer than rent.in~ one (or buying. one) :

"As a rule of thumb 200 instruct ions per man month is sometimes used to cost operational applications that are larger than IO,OOO instruct ions. However, in the 465L system, the SAC Command System, output is 92 instructions per man month. The Central SACCS program is about 650,000 instructions in length, and when programs reach this size, the cost of programm- ing goes up as the square of the number of instructions. This means that jobs which are three times as difficult to perform will cost nine times as much. It also means that errors in initial estimates of job difficulty can be prohibitive- ly expensive, because factors such as programmer communication and coordination contribute to the costs as much as the increased complexity of larger inter-related programs does. The price of each instruction in the $ACC$ is $32.00° This exceeds the price of the memory element that holds the instruction. The menory is, of course, a one-time expense.

'Unfortunately, we can' t i l l u s t r a t e the great d i f f i c u l t y we f ind in predicting the costs for new appl icat ions. Neither can we show the d i f f i c u l t y we encounter in assessing the costs of re- programming when new equipment or new requir~D~ents are i n t r o - duced. In a large operational system the cost of a change ranges from $100 to $1000 per inst ruct ion, and i t is a rare occasion when these costs can be predetermined.

'~o programming cos ts and programm- ing lead t imes are the hidden f a c t o r s i n computer usage. The expense of equipment procurement

and maintenance is completely overshadowed by the costs i n - herent in analys is , programming, and reprogramning e f fo r t s that must attend each ~omputer i n s t a l l a t i o n . " ( | 2 )

The reader may f i nd i t i ns t ruc t i ve to analyze the proposal of Figure 1 in the l i g h t of the pre- ceding quotat ions. Figure I i s a s l i g h t l y d i s - guised excerpt from a real 1ire proposal by one reputable organizat ion to another. When the pro- posal was made d i r e c t l y to top management and was nearly bought, the cQunterplay of the resident data processing s t a f f was to top i t . C r i t i c i z i n g s t a f f act ion in th is case as unprofessiona| would, whi le cor rec t , not be e n t i r e l y char i tab le since the s t a f f judged, and probably r i g h t l y so, that t he i r top management would not and could not under- stand them i f they spoke the t r u t h .

The quoted c r i t i c i sms demonstrate a c lear awareness of unhealthy symptoms, but l i t t l e under- standing of the underlying disease or diseases, and surprisingly little desire to inquire into their nature. The best the critiques from which the quotations are drawn have to offer is, there- fore, suggestions for the relief of symptoms. For instance, greater attention at last is being paid to how to manage large programming e f f o r t s from planning through successful operat ion, and to re la ted matters concerning the pos i t ion o f t 1 ~ programming s ta f f s on the organizat ion char t . ~'J" Such questions, whi le of c ruc ia l importance in the immediate fu tu re , are only per ipheral in the long run.

The fo l lowing observat ion goes a l i t t l e nearer the heart of the matter=

" I r o n i c a l l y , the basic problem which the computer poses is i ne f f i c i ency - - because the computer is d i f f i c u l t to use. A l l commun~cations between the user and the machine must f i r s t be formal ized by |arge pro- fessional s ta f fs of analysts and programmers before the user can achieve the necessary data processing c a p a b i l i t y at some fu ture date. This is f requent ly unreasonable and sometime impossible.... The A i r Force canlt afford to spend precious man years in programming to find that it has only solved yesterdayms problems. Nor can it af fo rd to bow to Parkinson=s Law and carry along hosts of programmers whose ranks w i l l swell exponent ia l l y with the numbers of computers required.,,(12)

I t is suggested tha t , to solve th is "basic problem," the middle man be e l iminated and

the user be given direct access to his machine with means for building up processes and under- l y ing data gradually and in his own way with what is described as "user controlled evolution and f l e x i b i l i t y . ''(12)

The key notion here is not the dubious implication that formallzation is necessary only because of the interposition of analysts and programmers while, on the contrary, a user di- rectly coupled to the machine could somehow muddle through with great speed toward an unde- fined goal, if only he were given "complete freedom to work in the problem setting uncon- strained by a fixed set of subroutines."(12)

Timing and vagueness are the key factors. Time lags in programming and time lags in query- ing through intermediaries are important, of course, but other delays of equal importance appear in a complete process= there is the time required to accumulate and to verify an initial data base; there is the time taken in gathering new information and updating existing files; there is the time taken in understanding infor- mation displayed. Here access to information is of no value without confidence in the timeliness and accuracy of the information and, above all# raw information, however timely, accurate and relevant, is not to be equated with knowledge or understanding. Formalization and structure =- or vagueness, the lack of these -- are also important factors but they cannot be studied in the presence of change without due regard to timing.

It may well be asked how, if so much is wrong with computers and their users, anything gets accomplished at all. An answer should emerge from considering four categories of tasks, definable in terms of timing and structure, which govern the share of each task that is best a l l o - cated to men or to machines.

In one of these categories the machine clearly predominates and has achieved unquestion- able usefulness. In a second, unstablej category the va|ue of machines is marginal at best, and the necessary things 9et done simply because the official system is usually bypassed~ machines and a11. It will be suggested that, in this interesting category, legitJmizing surreptitious bypassing procedures and assisting them by machine should prove a fruitful avenue of explo- ration. In a third categoryj presently exempli- fied only in several frontier research areas, machines may prove useful in the future. The four th category i s , at present, e n t i r e l y specu- l a t i v e .

The d e f i n i t i o n of the four categor ies is i l l u s t r a t e d in Figure 2° Time is character ized in terms of steady s ta te and t rans ien t phenomena, concepts f a m i l i a r in el ec t r i ca t engineering and in contro l theory. The other ax is of the d e f i n i t i o n i s described in terms of the familiar

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if s l i g h t l y d isreputable not ion of "bu11" and a complementary not ion of "cow"=

' ,bul l (pure)= re levancies, however re levan t , without data.

To bul l (v . i n t rans . ) or the act of b u l l i n g ,

To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observat ion which would determine the o r i g i n , nature, and meaning of data i f one had any. (To present evidence of an understanding of form in the hope that the read- er may be deceived in to supposing a familiarity with content).

cow (pure)= data, however re levan t , without re levancies.

To cow (v. intrans.) or the act of cowingt

To l i s t data (or perform operations) without aware- ness of, or comment upon, the contexts, frames of reference, or points of observation which deter- mine the origin, nature, and meaning of the data (or procedures). To wr i te on the assumption that ma fact is a fact.= (To present evidence of hard work as a substitute for understanding, without any intent to deceive)."(I~)

Although necessary to delineate the scope of bull as generally understood, the part of the definit ion in parentheses should be omitted for our purposes, good honest bulling being a basic and vl ta l function of management. This sentiment is more conventlonally expressed in the defl- nitlon of management as the art of making de- cisions with insufficient information, namely as bu l l i ng with some contamination by cow. The parenthesized por t ion of the d e f i n i t i o n of cowing should l ikewise be deleted to remove moral over- tones,

I t is obvious from the de f i n i t i ons that cow- ing is what computers do best and that to bu l l i s human. I t should, there fore , come as no surpr ise that computers have been most e f f ec t i ve and suc- cessful in coping with cow in the steady s ta te . The steady s ta te, to be more precise now, obtains when nei ther the we l l -de f ined procedures nor the s t ructure and scope of the data def in ing a task change s i g n i f i c a n t l y whi le the computer is

operating on the data, Contemporary computers, of course, see their data as pure cow. It is the prior human act of specifying procedures and data structures which, if done with any care at a11 (and this brings up the vexing matters of problem definition, adequate documentation and so fo r th ) provides the human rec ip ient of machine output wi th prec ise ly those contexts, frames of reference or points of observation which determine the o r i g i n , nature and meaning of the machine output . The steady s ta te hypothesis guarantees that machine output, when obtained, is germane to the task as seen by the user at that t ime, i.e. it insures that the output is interpretable and meanin@fu1.. Under these conditions,

"The masculine context has embraced the feminine pa r t i cu l a r , though i t s e l f =born of woman.' Such a union is knowledge i t s e l f , and i t alone can generate new contexts and new data which can un i te in t h e i r turn to form new know1 edge.' '(14)

While the s t ructure of data must be f i xed in steady state cowing, data content may vary. How- ever, output must be obtained whi le the input data on which i t is based are s t i l l v a l i d and, of course, in time to meet any deadl ine beyond which i t becomes useless. I f th is is the case, normal usage says that the machine system is operat ing in real t ime. I f t h i s is not the case, the out - put loses not i t s meaning, but i t s value. The categor ies of Figure 2 are concerned wi th meaning and hence po ten t ia l usefulness, whi le "rear t ime" determines actual usefulness°

A few examples should help to lend concrete substance to the foregoing. Most conventional numerical analysts app l ica t ions are prime ex- amples of steady s tate cowing. This is ce r ta i n l y the case when the procedure is a well establ ished algor i thm whose d e f i n i t i o n i s known to be sound, when proper scal ing has been performed to avoid overf low or underf low, and when input var iab les are res t r i c t ed to a range fo r which the algor i thm is known to work. The i n t e rp re ta t i on o f output under such circumstances is predetermined and s t ra igh t fo rward . An algor i thm fo r weather pre- d ic t ion is meaningful not only abst rac t ly but p r a c t i c a l l y i f i t predicts today's weather cor- rec t l y but i t is useless outside the realm of research i f i t makes th is pred ic t ion only to - morrow, or when condit ions have already changed, that i s , not in real t ime. Payrol l processing i s , by now, an almost c lass ica l form o f steady s tate cowing in real t ime.

Transients may arise in several ways. First, the amount of data may grow. Occaslonal spurts or benign long-term growth are usually easily handled by temporary or permanent additionS tO processlng facillties. Periodic peak loads and 1ong-ter~ growth of the volume of checks in the banking system are good contemporary examples.

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However, malignant data growths also occur, typi- c a l l y in m i l i t a r y and space data-reduct ion activi- ties, although the " h i s t o r i c a t records" of o rd i - nary business are not immune, the urge t ~ " g a t h e r s t a t i s t i c s " being so much stronger than-the capaci ty fo r d igest ing them. Any thought of using these data in real time i s rap id l y abandoned~ Surgery m s e l l i n g the records fo r scrap ~ or time - - just f o rge t t i ng t h e i r existence - - are the great healers1 nothing is los t but t ime, e f fo r t= and money.

More serious are the t rans ients induced by changes ~n the procedures, data structures and data scope def in ing a task. Unless such changes not only can be re f l ec ted i n machine operat ions, but a lso perceived and assimi la ted by the re- c ip ien ts of machine outputs the resu l t ing cows nearly of laboratory p u r i t y , is mismatched wi th a l l ava i l ab le bu11p and s t e r i l i t y i nev i t ab l y en- sues. Such t rans ients are of least t rouble when they occur in per iod ic systems and can be handled w i th in a per iod. The addi t ions of new regular em- ployees to a p a y r o l l , and s im i l a r changes in scope, are usual ly handled wi th great ease in we l l - de - signed systems, which then return to the steady s ta te . 0ne-tfme procedural or st ruc tura l changes, fo r instance a change in income tax wi thhold ing rates, or a changeover from piece work to time rate throughout a fac to ry , can be handled in per iod ic systems when there is enough lead time to plan, execute and tes t the necessary modi f icat ions and to expla in them to a l l concerned before cut-over to a new mode at an appropr iate time in some fu ture cycle. As anyone who has ever pa r t i c i pa ted in a conversion of t h i s type can t e s t i f y , i t i s often no easy matter and always requires the most minute and careful planning. It can, however, be done and has been done successfully without ampli- fication and propagation of the transient, and without loss of confidence in the automated system. A good deal of careful and protracted backstage bu l l i ng thus s t a b i l i z e s the t rans ient i n t o an instantaneous switch from one mode of steady state cow i n t o another.

When aper iodic demands are made of a per iod ic system, when task components change more rap id l y than the processing per iod, or when there are n o we l l -de f ined or def inab le periods~ c r i t i c a l i n - s t a b i l i t i e s appear. Malignant data growth 'mere ly" ob l i t e ra tes real t ime, per iod ic t rans ients can be s t a b i l i z e d t in e i t h e r case meaning remains s tab le . In the aper iodic case, cow and bu l l stampede and union becomes impossible.

Aperiodic demands on per iod ic systems are frequent and they are handled by bypassing the system in a cha rac te r i s t i c way. For examples the hay of an employee who leaves his Job between pay- r o l l dates i s , more of ten than not, e i t h e r e s t i - mated or ca lcu la ted by hand o n t h e basis of i n f o r - mation ava i l ab le from pr in touts made at the las t per iod and brought up to date by in format ion ob- ta ined by telephone or other ad hoc means from his supervisors. The system i t s e l f remains' ignorant

of the event un t i l the next per iod ic updating when appropr iate in format ion i s introduced~ t y p i - ca l l y v ia a change f i l e . I t is not a typ ica l f o r adjustments to be made to the estimated pay when more precise ca lcu la t ions can be made at the nor- mal po in t in the per iod.

Rapid changes in task components or absence of any p e r i o d i c i t y are less frequent and, a l - though computer people tend to take i t f o r g rant - edt the need for aper iod ic instantaneous operat ion should be very st rongly questioned=

"Most companies f i nd a month too short a per iod of time fo r an accurate budget on f i nanc ia l re - por ts . Would management want hourly or da i l y p r o f i t information? Ridiculousl ...This information re- quires periodic accumulation and ana lys is . In f ac t , the shor ter the period covered, the less reliable it is , What, then, could be the value of having this type of infor- mation available in a computerls memory for management to interrogate at wit1?" (I)

Lack of p e r i o d i c i t y and rapid change of task components are most marked in the large defense and space research and development p ro jec ts . The attempts to use PERT techniques in these realms provide us wi th an outstanding case h is to ry of unstable t rans ient cow.

The ou t l ines of the PERT ideal are too wel l known to warrant r e i t e r a t i n g them here. The reader in need of re f reshing is re fer red to two exce l len t sununariest one from the business po in t of view and one from the computing point of v iew, each accompanied by an extensive b ib l iog raphy . ~15,16) Although the bulk of the l i t e r a t u r e is e i t h e r s t o l i d l y neutral and narrowly technical or else fervently proselytizing on the matter of the value of PERT~ some skept ica l voices are being raised=

'rThough there is no s t a t i s t i c a l accumulation of data concerning the success and f a i l u r e of PERT on p a r t i c u l a r programs, i t seems safe to say that as many PERT-ing attempts have f a i l e d as have succeeded. And of those which have been deemed as successful, many have been so in name on ly , That is~ there may have been impressive graphics and expensive computer runs, but managers were actual ly basing decisions upon more conventional techniques." (17)

Typical b~nef i ts c i t ed f o r PERT are the fo l lowing s ix=(17)

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I , "The development of an in te l l lgent f i n t e l l i g i b l e and ef f ic ient plan."

This point is unassai lab le. Doubtlessly, a pos i t i ve requirement fo r e x p l i c i t plannings coupled wi th the Hawthorne e f fec t , (18) w i l l be benef i c ia l to any a c t i v i t y . The PERT network i s , in many instances, a very apt mode of representat ion for plans.

2, "The accurate measurement of progress, a~ainst the plan.'1

3, "The pro~nost icat ion of task accomplish- ments and ~oal achievement,"

4. "The s igna l l i ng of po ten t ia l problem a._reas before they ac tua l l y occur."

Were steady state cowing at ta inable~ benef i ts 2, 3 and 4 could conceivably be obtained. Un- fo r tuna te l y , f o r projects with well over lOOtO00 a c t i v i t i e s reported at the lowest level of deta i ls dsta are weeks old when they come to be processed by the PERT programs of a subcontractor. The out- put of these programs is next in terpre ted by '~ro- fess iona l " PERT analysts whose pr inc ipa l function~ aside from panning fo r nuggets of meaning in un- readable pr in touts prepared by "pro fess iona l " pro- grammers, is to make sure they and t he i r company w i l l stay out of t roub le . Appropr iate ly i n t e r p r e t - ed data are then fed wi th due delay in to a con- t r ac to r - l eve | network. Some more i t e ra t i ons of th is process eventua l ly y i e l d condensed data f o r the a t ten t ion of top management° I t is now months since the data so presented has been co l lec ted at the subcontractor l e v e l .

Were it only for this lapse of real time= the resultant data might have at least historical mean- ing° They are~ however, cow without bull= need- less to says in the meantime the real network has changed many times over; hence, no part of the computer system actually reflects the network as i t is now, nor are subnetworks in phase with one another. What does the manager do under these circumstances? He telephones his subordinates to get their current estimate of progress, accemplish- ments and problems.

Such short c i r c u i t s are occasional ly excused on the grounds that

'.'The o lder , conventiona| techniques w i l l be read i l y u t i l i z e d by much of management because they are part of management's her i tage. Regardless of the r e l a t i v e l y poor past performance of conventional techniques in depict ing problem areas, pred ic t ing status, and forcing planning, the weak known i s . l . preferred over the strong unknown. " ( 7 )

The problem is surely more fundamental than that= where management needs fresh bul ls PERT supplies s ta le cow= In many cases the implemen-

t a t i on of PERT systems has f a l l e n i n to the hands 1) of professional PERT analysts wi th an o ld - fashioned accountantSs out look, who t rea t PERT networks as i f they were audi t t r a i l s rather than planning too ls , 2) of hosts of programmers dedi- cated to po l ish ing to an exqu is i te shine m u l t i - tudes of i n f i n i t es~na l va r ia t ions on the basic PERT theme, and 3) of an occasional precise theo r i s t who suggests from the s idel ines that i t would be well Uto introduce a four th tJ~ne estimate in to the ca lcu la t ions fo r f i t t i n g . ~ d i s t r i bu t i ons to a c t i v i t y completion t~nes~ The four th tune estimate would make i t possible ~o remove the con- s t r a i n t that ~ =((b - a) /6)6 "(19)

To keep the balance it is only f a i r to add that such means as milestone or bar chart reports hardly fare be t te r . They too are bypassed by the phone ca l l to Joe.

5°

.

"The capabil ity to simulate and optimize plan changes and to determine impact upon program goals,"

"The capabil ity to maximize the effect- ive use of resources~"

These last two benefits are hardly ever bestowed by any actual PERT system, Where the attempt is made to simulate or maximizer i t is the basic network concept and network manipulation which is useful~ since the data massaged tend to be hypothetical data or some kind of estimates with- out direct relat ion to the flow of cow from belowo

The problem of maintaining the structure of PERT networks up to date is i t s e l f reminiscent of another major and cur ren t l y fashionable object of unstable t rans ient cowing, This is the process now being popularized as Co,nfiguration Management, t The essent ia l problem is to keep e f f ec t i ve track of the hierarchy of components and assemblies f i t t i n g i n to one another or combining together, u l t ima te l y to form some s ingle uni t of i n t e r e s t . This problem is serious enough in any indus t r ia l s i t u a t i o n , but p a r t i c u l a r l y so during development and ear ly production when design changes and other modi f icat ions are the ru le rather than the except ion.

A manual which makes recommendations for a new system of Configuration Management has this to say with respect to an important input to the re- porting and control system, the so-cal|ed ECP or Engineering Change Proposal:

"If the initial message is other than a written communication, it shall be confirmed by written message or ECP form within 24 hours. ... When written messages are used, a formal ECP on an ECP form sha|l be prepared and sub- mitted within 30 days after the initial communication. The same change identification number sha1|

B.1-7

be assigned to the formal ECP as was assigned to the wr i t ten message, except that the UEU code sha l l be dropped. This formal ECP shal l reference the o r ig ina l communication, the ind iv idua ls contacted and the status o f .cont rac tua l author- i za t i on . - (20a )

Elsewhere we find=

'The exact cyc l ing of the up- dating report to and from the agencies responsible fo r i t s preparat ion and updating shal l be establ ished by the app l ica- ble Conf igurat ion Hanagement Off ice (CHO)..,(2Ob)

I t w i l l be ing on.

is a safe bet that here too phone c a l l s necessary to f i nd out what is r e a l l y go-

I t might be argued that Conf igurat ion Manage- merit, un l ike the problems to which PERT addresses i t s e l f ~ is j u s t i f i a b l y a matter of cow and not of b u l l . I t i s a v i t a l matter , fo r example, to know prec ise ly what parts should be in what equipment at what t ime. Granting th is to be the cases the argument remains that a system which provides fo r time lags up to 30 days in the fo rma l i za t ion of one v i t a l part of the repor t ing cycle and leaves the t iming of others at local d i sc re t i on , cannot achieve i t s ob jec t ives , The contexts and frames of reference simply s h i f t too f as t .

About such matters the computer profession has shown a remarkably unprofessional head- in- the- sand a t t i t u d e bordering on sol ips ism. I t i s not t rue of management and engineering in format ion systems in general and only p a r t i a l l y t rue of PERT that "Theory and systems are wel l expounded~ but the harsh p r a c t i c a l i t i e s of PERT have remained in the background."(17) The same comments apply to our partners in crime, the systems and procedures people, the management spec ia l is ts~ and manage- ment i t s e l f . In the rush f o r sales# fo r wr i t i ng UsophisticatedU "advanced u programs (g iant econ- omy size)~ fo r the prest ige of a bigger and fas ter machine than that of the competi tor next doors fundamental questions remain unasked and unanswer- ed.

Who has ob jec t i ve ly invest igated the dynamics of the PERT repor t ing process? Or the need for i t ? How long does i t take to get data from t h e i r source to the point of use? How long need i t take? Why should the data be gathered at a l l ? And sup- posing one assumes that uoperat ional contro l data would be the only in format ion that i t makes ~ny

• , , ( I ) sense to c o l l e c t and update cont inuously, what would be the conclusion?=

" a l l the computer could supply, when in ter rogated would be such

things as inventory leve ls (by any part desired) or production records~

"And what is management to do with th is in format ion when i t is f lashed on the board room screen? There is only one thing that i t can do - - harass operat ional personnel= *e Notice also that you do not need an e laborate computer i n s t a l l a t i o n to communicate when something is ser ious ly wrong in the operat ing area, which is the only time when top management should be concerned, ***The usual pro- cedure is to accomulate the in format ion that is co l l ec ted f o r the operat ional managers and to submit i t to top management. (Remembers i f top management needs the data~ the person d i r e c t l y responsible must need i t , and, therefore~ i~ has to be c o l l e c ~ V for his use in any event) , u~ ' j

One conclusion is inescapable= when manage- ment needs good bu l l i t goes to the best sources~ namely in t ro -spec t ion or consu l ta t ion of sub- ord inates. This is i nva r i ab l y the case when attempting to operate machines in the t rans ien t cow mode= There is also good reason.to be l ieve that i t would remain the case even i f UallU i n - formation could be made ava i l ab le i n s t a n t l y , since~ as has already been noted, in format ion and knowledge are not synonymous and a good sub- ord inate is a bet te r aid to understanding than raw data. What is needede there fore , is not i n - stant cow bute i f anything, ins tan t bu l l= IF i t i s t rue that "Many managers today are making de- c is ions using less than one-tenth of the i n f o r - mation that would ~e made ava i l ab le to them w i th - out a computer, u ( lJ then surely good bul l is rarer commodity.

Vannevar Bush has made much the same obser- vat ion~ although what he said has been gr ievously d i s to r ted . He said, to repeat1 UThe i nves t i ga to r is staggered b y . . . f i n d i n g s and conclusionso~. many of which he cannot f i nd time to ~rasp? much less to rememberU(3) and he did not say Ustagger- ed by the papers and the repor ts . . ,most of which he cannot f indo u $o much t ime and e f f o r t have been spent chasing the w i | | -o~- the-w isp of auto- matic document and data re t r i eva l tha t fa r too l i t t l e a t ten t ion has been paid to those pos i t i ve phenomena which have kept the show going in sp i te of the a l leged Uinformatton exp los ion . - Refer- ences have indeed been made to 'minvisible col leges u whose members supply one another w i th s c i e n t i f i c and technical in format ion e i t he r o r a l l y or through the exchange of informal otherwise un- published l i t e r a t u r e . However, the whole

B° l -8

procedure is viewed as i r r e g u l a r , s l i g h t l y per- verted and possibly subversive. But a s im i l a r phenomenon makes the i ndus t r i a l and m i l i t a r y world go round.

"That part of scientific and technical information that can be freely handled is in articles~ reports, abstracts, chapters of books~ and the like N collections of words in a form that can be reproduced or stored. The un- handleable part -- in people's minds~ rough notesp and con- versations =~ which is often of greater importances still escapes al l tools of informat~oq.pursuit except human memory. ''kz=;

A poor manager may th ink that i f he does not know, nobody knows. A good one knows that when he needs in format ion about A he ca l l s on Joe and when he needs informat ion about B he ca l l s on George. Joe and George, in turn , e i the r know or know who should know, and so on down the l i n e . Across the l i ne a lso, for in sp i te of in-groups i n t e r - departmental j ea lous ies , competi t ion and other i so l a t i ng in f luences, the hor izontal component of the ve loc i t y of informat ion is o f ten much higher than the v e r t i c a l , and the col league in the same Job at the other place almost always can and does f i nd out everything but e x p l i c i t l y con f iden t ia l in format ion appropr iate to his level long before any supervisor on e i t he r side does. Thus, i n f o - rmation that might take two months to t ravel up and then down the o f f i c i a l channets from d i v i s ion A to d i v i s i on B v e r i t a b l y leaps across i f only Joe knows who George i s .

It would be a healthy first step if these pervasive and vital underground practices could be discussed in management and computer circles at least as frankly as sex. Computer people might then be tempted to explore new realms of applica- tion for steady state cowing techniques. For in- stance, it might turn out that keeping track of organizations, formal and informal, might be both easier and more rewarding than keeping track of equipment or documents.

In a s table, o ld- t ime company everybody who matters knows who knows what, and it is a sad day when old Ginny, who always had last year 's sales reports at her f i n g e r t i p s , or old George, whose t h i r t y years of design experience were ava i lab le to anyone for r e c a l l , i n t e rp re ta t i on and discuss- ions r e t i r e . This, of course, is of no use to the newcomer to the organizat ion who must spend a long time f ind ing out who's who, a process accepted as a t r a d i t i o n a l form of corporate hazing. The informat ion needs of the rank and f i l e deserve at least as much i f not. more a t ten t ion as those of management.

In the rapidly growing industries, and almost everywhere programmers are employed, reorganiza-

tion~ expansion and turnover are so common that hardly anybody knows who knows what. Finding Joe is a serious problem at a11 levels. To compound the difficultyj most organizations guard their internal organization charts~ job assignments~ and telephone books, if indeed they have any up- to-date ones, from their employees, other divis- ions or competitors with all the jealous concern of a brooding hen.

While there are legitimate reasons to guard privacy, at least part of this concern arises from a mistaken confusion of information gathering with the exercise of authority. Clearly~ the opening of information lines up down and across would legitimize a leaping over organizational boundaries ,hats while essential for real accemplishment, is done nowadays only at official risk and peril. Organization lines reflect lines of authority, but while knowledge is power~ the gathering of information is not the exercise of authority. It seems, therefore, perfectly proper for a manager to leap several levels down in search of answers, for a subordinate to leap across organization lines and occasionally over his bossls head, so long as decisions and orders travel by normal channels and care is taken to protect legitimate confidences such as, for example, actual salary figures. As pointed out elsewhere=

"President Kennedy...has insisted not only on the rights but the necessity~ to talk to those who are informed and not only to those who, by some quirk of accident,. . occupy positions of authority. ''(22)

Hence~ the use of machines to maintain de- tailed, accuratej and up-to-date organizations charts ought to be seriously investigated, start- ing from something like the chart of Figure 3 and aiming toward a quasi-automatic Joe-finder which strikes an acceptable balance between accessi- bility and privacy. Key-Work-In=Context techni- ques, associative network methods and the like might prove useful in preparing an index of the organization by functional areas and in aiding the tracing of paths through the organization. A few such attempts have been made, but none have received sufficient encouragement to proceed to detailed formulation or significant testing. It should also be noted in passing that the updating of an organization chart can be controlled through a mechanism neither president nor detail drafts- man will care to bypass, namely the payroll file.

In summary, the range of tasks described as transient cow are ripe subjects for fresh studies free from preconceptions. Too many of these tasks have been mistaken for steady state cow and mach- ines intended for them stand bypassed and use- less as expensive monuments to the accountants' love of pure cow, to the programmers' unprofess- ional pursuit of their needlessly esoteric art for art ts sake, and to widespread management neglect of i t s own information problems and those

B.i-9

of its subordinates. The accountants must learn to distinguish history from plans. The program- mers must think of themselves less as mathemati- cians manqu@ or as aristocrats of accounting and more as engineers, for programming ise if any- thing, a major new incarnation of the vanishing older engineering professions. Programmers are not scientists and their role is too important and too professlonal to permit treating them as technicians or clerks. The practice of pro~ engineering with the ethical and intellectual standards and obligations of an engineering pro- fession should be encouraged. Management must learn to apply to information problems, to pro- gram engineering and to programming or software the same expectations, the same standards, the same controls and the same status it applies to other engineering aspects of its enterprise4

The two remaining categories of tasks may now be disposed of rather briefly, since relative- ly l i t t l e is known about them. Steady state bu l l may be character ized as a task in which one or more of the procedures~ the data structures and data scopes which def ine i t are al lowed to vary in a controlled way. Concern here is not primarily with the rapid processing of vast amounts of data but rather with the shaping and understanding of contexts, frames of reference and points of observationo

This is the realm of developing and tes t ing new methods of numerical ana lys is l the realm of s imula t ion , of " the c a p a b i l i t y to simulate and opt imize plan chaoges and to determine impact upon program goals u(17) and of " the c a p a b i l i t y to maxi- mize the e f f ec t i ve use of resources, u(179 I t i s a lso the realm of i n te res t ing experiments in computer-aided design and planning and of renewed speculat ion about the "Hemex," which Bush v isua- l i zed as an aid to thought and not as a vast auto- matic garbage can f u l l of undigested documents. (23,24,25p26)

Were some of the time, effort and money heed- lessly spent on premature, ill-concelved and vast cowing schemes applied to studying the dynamics of information flow in organizations and to en- couraging research and development -- but not pre- mature application -- of methods and devices suit- able fo r steady state b u l l i n g , there would be a much greater l i ke l i hood of genuine progress to - ward meeting management Zs need f o r good honest bu l l spiced but not drowned by a dash of re levant cowl,

The absence of any cont ro l over procedures, structuresp scope or content character izes t rans- ient bu11. This highly speculative area en- compasses a fair amount of serious research on what would be popularly described as Uthinklng machines, u In this paper, however, further ex- ploratlon of this realm at this point could lead only to bad pure bu11°

B.I-iO

REFERENCES

I~ Oearden, J., "Can Management Information Be Automated?" Harvard Business Review, March-April 1964, pp. 128-135.

2. Muller, H. J., 'Ean Mathematics Be Beautiful?" Book Week, The Washington Post, March 22, 1964.

3- Bush, V., "As We May Think." Atlantic Monthly, July 1945, pp. I01-I08.

. Puclnskl, R., National Information Center, Hearings before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on a Natlonal Research Data Processing and Information Retrieval Center of the Committee on Education and Labor u House of Representatives, 88th Congress, First Session on H.R. 1946; Volume I , p. 4, 1963.

5- Bar-Hillel, Y., "Is Information Retrieval Approaching a Crisis?" American Documentations April 1963 ppo 95-98.

6. Anonymous, "Is the Computer Running Wild?" U.S. News & World Report, February 24, 1964, pp. 80-86 o

7. Burck, Go, "The Boundless Age of the Computer=" Fortune, March 1964, pp. I01 f f .

8. Flock, L. R., Jr., "Seven Deadly Dangers in EDP." Harvard Business Review , May-June 1962, pp. 88-96.

9. Cowan, T. Ao, "Decision Theory in Law, Science and Technology." Rutgers Law Review# 17, Spring 1963, pp. 499-530o

I0. Garrity, J. T., "Top Management and Computer Profits." Harvard Business Review, July-August 1963, pp. 6 f f .

11. Singleton, J. W., Software Oesiqn and Implementation, SP-I092, March 4, 1963, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica)California.

12. Terhune, C. H., Jr., Address by Major General C. H. Terhune, Jr. to the American Federation of Information Processing Societies, Las Vegas# Nevada, November 12~ 1963 Air Force Systems Command, Electronic Systems Division News Release, Office of Information, L. G. Hanscom Field, Bedford, Massachusetts.

13. Holdiman, T. A., "Management Techniques for Real Time Computer Programming." J.A.C.M. 9, July 1962, pp. 387-404.

14. Perry, W. J., Jr., Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts - - An Epistemological Inquiry, Bureau of Study Counsel, Harvard University, March 1963.

1 5 . Kahn, A. B., "Skeletal Structure of PERT and CPA Computer Programs." Comm. ACM t 6, August 1963, PP. 473-479.

16. Oooley, Ao R., "Interpretations of PERT." Harvard Business Review$ March-April 1964, pp. 161-172,

17. Boverie, R. T., "The Practicalities of PERT." IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, March, 1963, pp. 3-5~

18. Roethllsberger, F. J. and W. J. Dickson, Management and the Worker, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1939.

19. Murray, J. Eo, "Consideration of PERT Assumptions." IEEE Trans. on Engineering Management, September 1963, pp. 94-99.

20. Anonymous, Confiquration Manaqement During the Definition and Acquisition Phases, AFSCM 375-I, Symposium Workshop Draft, January I, 1964, Headquarters, Air Force Systems Command, USAF

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21.

22.

23°

24.

25,

26,

a) Exhibit V l l l , paragraph 6°4.8.4~ p. 19 b) Exhibit XVll, paragraph 6°I i ,p° 3.

Tukey, J. W., The Citat ion Index and the Information Problem, Annual Report for 1962 under Grant NSF-G-22108, St 'at ist ical Techniques Research Group, Princeton Univ.

Hollemon, J. H., Letter to the Editor, Sciences January 31, 1964, p° 429.

Culler, G. J. and R. W. Huff, "Solution of Nonlinear Integral Equations Using On-line Computer Control." AFIPS Conference Proceedings 21, 1962~ pp. 129-138.

Englebart, D. C., Augmentin 9 Human Intel lect l A Conceptual Frameworks Report AFOSR-3223, Stanford Research Insti tute, Menlo Park, California~ October 1962.

Kel ly , J. L., C. Lochbaum and V. A. Vyssotsky, "A Block Diagram Compiler." BSTJt 40, May 1961, pp, 669-676,

Sutherland, I. Eo, "Sketchpad - A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System." AFIPS Conference Proceedings~ 23j 1963, pp= 329-3b~.

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FIGURE 1

A PROPOSAL FOR AUTOMATED CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT i I

BASIC REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

REQUIREMENT

i i i , | |

A COMMON CODE AND NOMENCLA-

TURE SYSTEM

STANDARDIZED CRITERIA FOR

EQUIPMENT PROGRAMMING

FIGURE 2

RAPID READOUT OF VAST

AMOUNTS OF DATA

,~i i , | i i i i

SIMPLIFICATION OF COM-

MUNICATIONS

SOLUTION

, . | . , .

PROGRAM ELEMENTS IDENTIFI-

CATION

COMMON GROUND RULES FOR THE

COLLECTION OF DATA

ELECTRONIC DATA PROCESSING

i

SINGLE CHANNEL ORGANIZATION

APPLICATION OF COMPUTERS TO FOUR CATEGORIES OF TASKS i H 11 4 i

BULL

TRANSIENT

B. 1-13

STEADY STATE

COW

SUCCESSFUL

TROUBLESOME

(UNSTABLE)

SPECULATIVE

RESEARCH AREA

FIGURE 3 -- AN ANNOTATED ORGANIZATION CHART

XYZ COMPANY COMPTROLLERS DEPARTMENT

Operations Division

P. Maxwell Revere 3191' t

Assistant Comptrol~er

*Telephone Extension

Arnold I. McDonald 3717 General Accountant

Billing and Collecting Procedures

Nell Nelson III 3764 General Accountant

Interdepartmental and Disbursement Accounting

EDP Development EDP Planning

and Administration

Scan P. O'Brlen 3608 General Accountank

Personnel, Organization Results, Measurement

and Costs

Robert M. Andrews 4831 _Supervising Accountant Billing and Collecting - Accounts

- James D. Barron 4833 Supervising Accountant Billing and Collecting - Large Users and New Services

David C. Callan 4841 _Supervising Accountant Billing and Collecting

Joseph E. Dwyer 4873 i upervising Accountant For Services

Stephen O. Farhman 4835 Supervising Accountant

L Disbursement Accounting |For Development and I Interdepartmental Data Processing Procedures

Ronald D. Elias 4837 Supervising Accountant

-Service Order and Directory For Development

Oliver S. Gill 4861 _Supervising Accountant Results, Measurements and Costs

Edward P. Hurley 4863 Supervising Accountant

--Personnel and Organization Matters

Clarence W. Innemann, Jr. 3365 Personnel Relations Supervisor Corporate Comptroller's Department Personnel Matters

Paul E. Jones 4865 Supervising Accountant

Paul V. Petersen 3896 F Material and Supplies, Subsidiary General Accountant ! Billing and Inventories

Disbursement Accourtlng and Corporate Books Procedures Leland C. Korbett 4871

Supervising Accountant I Property Records,Plant Retirement Estimates, Cost Distributions, Custom Work Billing and Plant Performance Reports

Miss Sarah C. Qulgley 3192 Silas Q. Lambert 4867 Secretary

Supervising Accountant Payroll, Voucher and Corporate Books Procedures

B.i-14