Local system evolution

If you talk with anyone who has been IT world for a while and has actually listened to what is going around, you will hear a lot of stories of projects going wrong. Lots of money wasted, lots of good initiatives botched, lots of tasks unfulfilled. And especially true it is about big projects - bigger it is, more often you will hear that company x has cancelled project after millions of euros invested and several calendar years spent. Or government agency awarding too big money to fishy company to deliver something needed in theory, but never finishing, or overspending, or some other company suing said agency and delaying everything by seven years. Or combination of everything mentioned and some other progress thwarting nonsense thrown in. And everything too waterfall to ever reach finishing line, or too agile to ever gasp the whole scope of the project.

So, familiar stuff. What I want to suggest is taking more natural approach. And by natural I mean something that we could probably see in nature, not something that is natural in project management, government contracting and corporate life.

I want to think local and introduce some competition. First draft of my idea applies to local governments - in Europe we have thousands and thousands of local governments. Provinces, cities, suburbs, parishes, counties, townships and even occasional micro duchy. What makes all of those political entities similar is the level of independence they always strive for. Most of European countries have it written in their most sacred laws and most certainly every locally elected person does want to have as much local control as possible. And all that ends in hundreds of thousands of similar contracts awarded to similar IT vendors to build similar software that performs similar functions.

Of course, I bet there have been initiatives by national, federal and higher up government bodies to try and unify various software platforms. And most likely results have been either over budget, over deadline or without all functionality being delivered. And most likely all three factors combined. I might be wrong, but it certainly feels that nothing else can come out of solution that is imposed top-down to lots of slightly different entities.

My suggestion is to do build software locally, but with certain rules. Rules or framework, that is imposed top-down from as top down body as possible. Rules that govern such things as general architecture - modularity, interface standards, security level, source control, needed documentation, stuff like that. All that then is made publicly available for comments, ridicule and revisions. Next step is removing at least half of it - threat such rules like a good novel during editing, not as usually - by adding more and more adendums, extensions and clarifications. Make it a good read instead.

Next, push it down to each smallest municipal entity in a form of law. And force every single IT contract awarded to include this framework. And when software gets built, enforce framework by using spirit of the law,  not the letter. And yes, it is possible - why not to include reference to special arbitration court in case of any disputes. Arbitration court that would consist of wide jury of actual peers of vendor - geeks, scientists, developers and IT contractors of all levels. Once framework gets traction, it anyway will be easier to develop for that, instead of doing some hackish workarounds. And we will have achieved our result. Actually, we will be at the half way.

At this point, if we have for example HR system or payroll system, that is built using the same framework across hundred or two hundred organisations, but the same amount of contractors, we will have one or two hundred systems. Similar, but with different prices, support models, look and feels, functions and general user experience. Very different in many aspects - but, most importantly, comparable in apples-to-apples fashion. So, we let systems work for a year or most likely two - delivery times will differ from one place to another, anyway - and then we compare. And during those couple of years we do not let too much new changes ordered, so there is some backlog and some need for improvement is felt.

Then comes important bit - we do not make country wide beauty pageant to determine who did best, no, because choosing one would bring us back to the bloated mega project we discussed at the beginning. Instead we compare only locally, we compare cities, counties and hamlets that lie next to each other. Geographically local. Why? Because they are most likely culturally similar, they have similar history, similar people, similar politicians and most importantly - similar needs and hence requirements.

We do public comparison of offers from vendors who delivered first batch of systems, we introduce new requirements that were gathered for all systems and include those as well. We choose one vendor and after a year or two, depending on system complexity we have unified system in five to ten neighbouring organisations. Of course, it is not easy task to implement and year may sound a little bit too short to do that - but remember that everyone is working within the same framework, so systems are technically similar - and this newly chosen vendor - second level vendor - must be given very deep and good access to inner workings of all first level systems. And of course - documentation is part of the framework.

After second level is done, wait for a year or two and repeat. Around six to ten years have passed, and we have one good working system for every single local government in a country. And yes, it is time for a first picture of this blag. With colours.

And if you think ten years is a long time, remember that big top down projects can easily take just as long - but in this case, all those years everyone has had a usable, constantly improving system.
And yes, framework should not change more often than couple of times during those ten years. And if it is not too prescriptive, those changes can be avoided. Just threat it as a law - those do not changed too often. (At least, those that forbid something, those tend to hang around for eternity, but that will be theme of next post)

So that was first draft of an idea - next I thought about how to apply that to something less politicly awkward than local governments. And more interested in saving money and raising productivity.

So, what kind of corporation would be in any way similar to local government? It should have lot of branches that are a bit different, yet similar, more than nil of independence and bunch of IT systems. Well, everyone has at least one or two IT systems. So what would this branchful corporation be? Bank? No - there is as little independence as overlords can achieve. Manufacturing? Nope - not that many branches, and not that local.

There might be more, but currently I am thinking about retail chains that are built on franchise basis. Or any chains that are built based on franchise. Retailers would have only 3-5 systems per store, depending on what they are selling, while other franchises might have more.
Hotels come to mind - lot of stuff happens in hotels, reservations, many workers, big inventory, add on functions - restaurants, conference centres. And all that quite similar between partners, yet often with enough local differences. Different countries, different financial, labor laws. Yet similar idea.

Of course, when you build corporation and franchise from scratch - when you actually build those hotels from ground up, then all the systems can be adapted, can be unified from the start. But what when you buy? Merge? Divest? Leave other and join your franchise?

Even better if framework standards would be then set with some sort of industry associations - something that businesses have sat up themselves, and that can decide of such whole sector improving standards. While keeping an eye of all anti-cartel laws, of course.

Whole world is trying to merge, cut costs, improve - and doing it with local evolutionary principles might be a good idea.

p.s. any interesting examples of industries this idea could apply to?

Clans and Tribes: Incentive for good

Tribal human

People used to group together into clans and tribes for millennia, mostly for shared resources and protection against dangerous animals, humans and times. Over time such organisations got less and less important in our daily lives, and depending on culture and historical circumstances, has often disappeared all together.

Clans used to be couple of extended families grouped together, each family having several dozen members. Families might have shared ancestry in the past, maybe it was just bigger extended family split into several families. Or maybe some families could have formed a clan by intermarriage.

And tribe used to be several clans sharing same culture, ancestry, religion. After tribe grew too big, more than thousand members, it could also split in several related entities.

Modern nation states, after hundreds of years of feudal oppression and then few more centuries of industrialisation have pretty much destroyed those entities. Now state is protecting us, each of us can make living good enough for food (more often, than not) and there is not much need to bond together to create a hunting party.

So, we are all by ourselves, with nearest family close by and extended family further than 1st cousins stays pretty much unknown.

Not!

During recent times, word "tribalism" has often been heard with negative connotation. Like in Iraq or Afghanistan, some tribes fight against rule of government, or that there are deadly blood feuds between tribes, or that corruption and nepotism is in the record highs due to clans sticking to their own.

Somehow, in Europe, only places where I have heard clans mentioned, are Scotland, with its harmless rituals, and Italian Mafia clans, with their not so harmless line of work. In England, Sweden, Austria or Switzerland there are no such thing, yet "tribalism" is still considered something evil. Why? I am not sure - it might be because of old rivalry between nation state and its interests, and interests of tribes and clans. Regardless, one can hardly imagine such issues in modern Frankfurt or Krakow.

Yet people still like the idea. It provides warm feeling of belonging to the group, being protected, not being alone against the universe. I have always wanted to be part of the group. During teenage years in school, during university, when I set to conquer internet for first time, when I joined club of interests for first time. Lots of love for bonding myself with others. 

Also, I have noticed that when reading Fantasy or Science fiction books, I always like and enjoy a lot that heroes have clans and structures they protect until their last breath, swear allegiance to and act all honourably no matter what happens. 

Something just draws me to that, even if such set-up is impractical,  not easy to set up, and bound to create hard to solve problems.

Idea for modern society

So, lot of reasons why we might love clans and lots of fair reasons of why we do not have any.

Could we use this concept to our advantage, while keeping all the potential issues locked away for good?

Yes - why not. There are lot of times when we could use helping hand and feeling of belonging to a group, without that deteriorating into feuding, bribery and general rot. And sometimes government also could use the fact that there are groups of people who stick together. 

And no, I am not talking about collective punishments there  - that would be very very bad, and such government would not live too long. My idea is exactly opposite, but with the same effects. 

Lets create collective incentives, based on clan. Clan could be 3-4 extended families tied together, either randomly by government, or by their own choice, or by some clever mix of the both, that makes things nice, clean and even. In any way, if we have group of people, not bigger than two hundred, I would say - it has to be comprehensible and has to feel real for average person, then we as a government, can set some quite easily achievable targets for whole group and then reward the clan with some tax break or another. 

For example, it is very important for our collective safety, that everyone has been vaccinated for all the preventable diseases - even small percentage of population who has not, can create huge risk for everyone. So, we can set a target for a clan, that if over 97% of clan members of appropriate age have been vaccinated, then clan receives discount on family doctor fees for next five years. Such a scheme might actually pay for itself, as vaccinated people would have to visit doctor less often anyway. And collective pressure - imagine if 20% of your clan are old ladies for whom such fees are very important - will shoot vaccination levels sky-high with no extra effort from government. All the money booked for 'social advertising' could be spent elsewhere. 

Let me give you several more ideas. For example, education, if at least 90% of clan who are of age from 19 to 65 have finished high school, then everyone trying to enroll into state university, will have slightly better chance of enrolling. Or slightly smaller school fee. Or a bit better deal when getting student loan. 

Or, for example, if everyone of age from 18 to 65, are either in school/university, has a job (including being businessman and paying salary to themselves) or has registered in state unemployment agency and shows up for trainings/job interviews/etc - then all the clan pensioners get 105% pension and all the toddlers have slightly better chance to get into state kindergartens. Imagine peer pressure to pay taxes, seek job and keep thyself in school! 

And of course, if that was hard to achieve in previous days and ages, then now, in 21st century, there can be simple page in internet, connected to your favourite social network, that would show achievable targets and (personalised) benefits that you as a member of a clan would receive, if achieved.  And list of people who has or has not performed/complied with said target.

And of course, if you are loner, like to live in the forest and hate everyone - you can opt out of such schemes. Of course, if there are no taxes incoming from you, then state might get more suspicious of you than others.

Bigbrotheresque issues of course are valid concern. And state should not invent more information to gather from people, and should not increase pressure in any other ways and of course - never should do collective punishment. Government already has tons of targets on what consensus is there - those are then prime candidates for usage within  this paradigm. And yes, state most likely already has all the data mentioned above - it just needs to be put together and used appropriately.