Offpoint - From Singapore To Seattle

Moving forward, or back?

2008-07-17T21:51:00.001-07:00

In big organizations like where i work, there'll be a lot of projects that go on and on. Some of these projects are for process reengineering, while others are technological upgrades for what is known as line-of-business services/applications.

When a technological project is funded, the most common goals are in terms of achieving higher automation with less manpower, increasing throughput, higher consistency and quality etc. There usually isn't any activity driver as a result of "version 3.XX of some technology was just released and we want to be using the latest programming technology". Specific and measurable goals, which typically have financial implications, are the main drivers of technological projects.

The main goals for the project that i'm referring was increased throughput with quicker processing, and better monitoring tools that imply lesser manpower.

Looking back (yet again), the goals were fine, but the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

Instead of higher automation with less manpower,... let me think about it. The service used to have Randy as the primary person supervising the service. Then i took over. And then Andrew joined. And when this current service was rolled out, we added a huge team of service monitoring and support folk to sustain it.

Now i don't even dare to think how many people we've gotten that directly or indirectly have to handle this service.

Indeed, i might be unfair because our current volume and service is so much more than what Randy used to handle, but in essence, it's the same thing right? With better technologies all around, why do we have to get such an increase in manpower to sustain it, i wonder?

At risk of beating a dead horse over and over again, it really fall back to the one single wrong decision made. To accept the service as-is.

Operationally, emotionally, logically, functionally, I don't think we ever recovered from that.

Some more pondering....

2008-07-14T23:51:00.001-07:00

One of the hardest lessons I've discovered in the last few years here is that confirmation-bias is bad, and it's even worse when it's acknowledging bad and yet is an encouraged practice.

In a way, everyone is hired for their expertise. Thus, part of your job's main responsibility is to use your knowledge as an expert and apply that to any situations that come your way. You'd think that in most organizations that since the management have hired you in the first place, that they would believe in what your knowledge and experience will tell you.

Funny thing is, that's often not the case! Makes you wonder why though.

When i stepped into one of the projects and saw the quality (or lackthereof) of the design and implementation, i was quite shocked by it. Simple failure test cases would break it in minutes, and caused a lot of unnecessary discussions and arguments about what some testers were testing and passing.

Using notepad as a simple example (my project wasn't notepad!), it was almost like this:

- requirements stated that notepad should load a text file and display it within the notepad program window

For testers that would just want to confirm the design, they would literally find the easiest text file available and load it into notepad. Test PASS!

Now with hindsight, this is a very very bad requirement. Bad in terms of it being very unclear, immeasurable and unspecific enough. In simpler terms, it's too vague.

In a way, this situation also taught me to think and use phrases almost in a legal manner. Sometimes maybe too extreme, especially in new hires' eyes, but it's something that you'd learn from mistakes made, by others and yourself.

Mistakes will be made over and over again. I hope that they will be different mistakes, and lessons can be learnt from each mistake made.

I personally have a training style where I try to give people as much leeway to make mistakes as possible. Sink or Swim, so they say.

My opinion is that if people are good and are personally accountable to themselves, they would want to find their own ways to do certain actions in their jobs. It's harder to tell folks what are bad, but it's easier to let them make the mistakes, and show them what the correct (or more desirable) actions are, and let them make the call to think about them. This allow folks to grow 8).

Which is my number one reason for not having documentation! hahaha..

I think this philosophy came as a result of a few good mentors throughout the years: Grabbing the good points from mentors such as Tony, Teck, Chan, Sherman and Randy, avoiding the bad points from other folks, and adding a little "Jonathan" spice, and out come my training philosophy.

Time to think..

2008-07-12T01:45:00.001-07:00

After a strenuous June, there's now time for me to think. About the past few years here, and the future. Challenges here and there.

So here's the first of my brain dump, so to speak. Actually, they're like agenda items within my thoughts right now, each with a score towards a final qualification score, for some long-term decisions to be made.

We had the reorg recently (in May) which resulted in better morale, clearer goals, and a more agile team. That's the good part. It also created this weird structure that i don't think is working well. I'll probably hear some comments about giving it more time to smooth out the kinks, but time isn't really of an abundance quantity these days. If i want to use the terminology used for projects, i would say that it's a yellow status now.

The group i'm in have a huge project that will encompass most of our next few months. To achieve that, there will be a lot of challenges to be met straight up, as well as sacrifices that will be made to reach the level of work required. Most of the pre-work have already been done, and now it's up to Andrew and the two new hires to hit the ball out of the ball park, so they say here 8). It's hard to find any issues with the work that's required of them here, but i do expect some delays from other teams that we might have to depend on for some activities to be completed.

Ian is on his parental leave till mid August, and other projects are practically on a standstill with the above project being on everyone's mind. That also give me a little bit of free time to utilize the increasing number of "focus rooms" to do work. What work?

A ever-increasing list of things that i will need to help move things forward for my team. Funny thing is, i gathered most of these action items myself! Started to assign some of them to the team and even the new service manager Kim. In this new structure, i'm just pushing for action to be done. "Either lead, follow me , or get out of the way", as one of my Big Dogs t-shirt says!

Somehow, this arrangement leaves me some free time to take a break as well. Some days in late July, i'll be at home doing my own stuffs (haven't decided what yet), and then in early August, Sharon and I might be going on a holiday trip.

Though it's in the midst of summer, i want winter now..

2008-07-10T23:59:00.001-07:00

Why?

The announcement of a remake of one of my favorite games on the DS platform is making me yearning for winter to be here now. It's also the only game which i actually enjoyed so much that i bought its soundtrack when i was in Japan. Great soundtrack that anyone will enjoy too.

Which game is that?

Chrono Trigger! The trailer

You know what.. chances are I'll be back in Singapore when it's released.

*sigh*

Write Responsibly

2008-07-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

I know it is our blog and we can say what we like but I think if we are planning to write some unpleasant stuff about an event or people, we need to be factual or better still, do not write about it. We need to responsible in what we are writing. Once written, it is difficult to retract the statement.

And to celebrate July 4th...

2008-07-04T01:51:00.001-07:00

I think nothing shouts USA more than its food!

I actually quite like the totally American invented General Tso's Chicken, and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream is nice too!

Finally.......... a break!

2008-07-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks were totally crazy for me and my team.

We had a hard deadline to meet and amazingly we completed it. I termed it as "Holy Cow" as i bought a bottle of wine called Holy Cow hehe..

Gotten some good training from experts in the industry, including Randy, and some senior folks in the company too. I also conducted some "express-lane" training with the team as well. I think i condensed two years of training into four hours. I'm sure that they all were overwhelmed too; doubly so!

I also attended another internal conference and an industry discussion meeting too, which finally ended today. The infamous pre-conference reception at Randy's place was a blast as well, and i get to meet up with a lot of folks yet again, and caught up on industry news with them.

In between these, i did a whole bunch of presentations, with decks that some folks thought were not possible on Powerpoint. The features in the Powerpoint 2007 make it easy for an absolutely non-artistic person to come up with great graphics.

On top of all these, we did a presentation of our service on Wednesday. It was quite amazing that we were even able to breathe with all the work that was done.

Sharon took a photo of me yesterday, and the first thing that came in my mind when i saw it was that i looked as old as my father!

When I reached home today, the only thing i can think of is.. "sleep sleep sleep.....".

Thank goodness tomorrow's Independence Day. I'll sleep through it for sure.

Bad English

2008-07-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

One of my co-workers gave me a very candid feedback on my grammar. She said I speak well but I do not write well (sounds like most Caucasians). I was very hurt by her remark but I know she meant well.

She told me that to be a good communicator, I need to articulate and write well. That is true. My boss agreed as well.

She is an English major and I am sure it irks her to see incorrect grammar. I would not be able to stand it as well.

What's the next course of action? Get a tutor. My other co-worker is also a English major and I have asked them to tutor me. She laughed at me. She agreed to help when I need help.

I think it is good to listen to feedback and evaluate what needs to be done. On a positive note, this problem can be resolved, better sooner than later.

My farewell to Bill...

2008-06-27T21:45:00.001-07:00

Today was his last day working full time in the company. I was luckily selected as one of the attendees of his last town hall talk within the company from an online lucky draw.

Kim, my PM (or SM now hehe), was invited too as she has been working in the company for about 25 years. Imagine that!

Anyway, i went to the conference building pretty early, and saw a queue already 40+ long. It was almost like the fanboys queuing up to meet their celebrities, or to buy the newly launched game consoles or something.

The mood in the queue was quite silent. Probably everyone had in their mind what today mean in terms for the company and for themselves.

At about just before 9am, we were ushered in. I sat at the fourth row in the audience, while Kim was placed in the designated second row for the folks that worked over 25 years in the company. The first row were for the top execs.

Steve did a quick intro and then came Bill. The first standing ovation, among many others, was over a minute long. The main portion of his talk was shared with Steve, and it was a journey back in time and back!

The last part was quite emotional, when Steve teared up and Bill was visibly trying to hold back his tears as he continued speaking.

A lot of us in the audience was shedding tears too.

On a personal note, i'm sad that he's leaving the company. It's easy to explain to non-computer users who you work for if you quote Bill's name, and it's hard to do so with Steve.

Steve said that each and everyone have a different way of benefiting from Bill's contributions. I think so. Each of us sees a different side of him in our own way.

I'm sure he'll enjoy himself in his charity work, and i know that the world will benefit too.

P/S: Before Steve and Bill arrived, on the PA system, a few songs were being blasted. One of the song was Green Day's Time of Our Life. I wonder if somebody try to imply something here?

Bill Gates - My American Idol Has Left The Building

2008-06-27T16:22:00.000-07:00

It is a sad day for alot of employees. I may not be a full time employee in MS but I am sad to see a great leader leaving the company which he helped to build in 1974. I am sure he will like his new job.

I don't know what will happen to MS after Bill is gone but I have a uncanny feeling that there will be a lot of changes. I hope the company will continue to grow and staff will enjoy their work.

Good bye Bill...

Too busy with work!

2008-06-23T22:11:00.000-07:00

Wow.. it's been a while since i last updated this blog. The last two weeks have been exceptionally high volume of work and discussions.

This week, my whole team has a full schedule from 8 to 5 every day! That's something that had never happened in a loooong while. I think it's been fun this week with the kind of training that my team's been getting.

It's tough, but it's also a great way to build the team together.

To my fellow workers....

2008-06-18T20:33:00.001-07:00

And perhaps people that are interested in the technology space, you have to read this amazing final post from a blogger and wonder.

So long, and thanks for all the fish, extreme.

With good intentions come..

2008-06-15T22:23:00.001-07:00

sigh
Originally uploaded by jonpoon

A recent effort to kick start some changes was somehow deemed a futile exercise when some folks took the initiative to label the requested comments with different degrees of priority based on seriousness.

I made an open comment that the labeling was wrong and unnecessary. Thankfully, the manager that started this effort acknowledged my feedback and said that he'll read every single comment regardless of the labeling.

A few of the committee members explained to me the reasoning behind it. I had to tell them that I'm the least of the problems.

The ones that will not raise their feedbacks or objections are the ones that they need to worry about. After my original email was sent, a few other colleagues gave nodding agreements. They are the ones these folks need to look at.

Otherwise, this effort might as well be stopped now.

My second set of toys

2008-06-10T18:28:00.001-07:00

My second set of toys
Originally uploaded by jonpoon

Just got my new DVD set from The Rock!

It's a 3 DVD set that is an update from his previous DVD entries. Probably to remove away all references to Chris Benoit, as i do not see his name listed in any one of the 19 matches.

The most entertaining man in sports entertainment, WWE really doesn't excite me anymore after he left for Hollywood.

Recently, i rediscovered him and started to reuse some of his famous catchphrases.

Fun times indeed....

Our achievements @ 35

2008-06-07T11:13:00.000-07:00

Yes it is official. Jon and I are 35 years old. But Jon will tell you that I am 3 weeks older than him as my birthday is in May and his birthday is in June. Do I care? No.

Our achievements @ 35

Our biggest accomplishment -we have each other :)
Healthy
Young looking, well our Ang Moh co-workers say so. We will not dispute that :)
Fabulous @ 35 - this is easy. Everyone can do it.
I shop and Jon waits for me :)
Trying our best to stay open minded on work and world issues
Accept the reality that not all things will go our way
Older and definitely wiser, you think :)
We don't own a house and have no plans to do so
Still love to ride a bus to Seattle
Jon has gone to the movies once and twice for Sharon in our 4 years in Redmond
I have not driven on highway on my own for the sake of other drivers. I am so considerate
Jon has collected over USD3,000 worth of video games. What an achievement!
Jon has earned the reputation of being a SMART ASS amongst his co-workers
I AM the HOME BOSS! WOOHOO!!!

I will let Jon continue if he has more accomplishments to add.

My presents for myself..

2008-06-07T00:14:00.001-07:00

GalaxyWars
Originally uploaded by jonpoon

Was my birthday and i went on a small spending spree.

After picking up Sharon, we went to the Nintendo store and were trying to see if they have Wii Fit t-shirts. Nope.. not available yet, so i got myself a nice Nintendo cap.

Went to Circuit City without any plans of getting anything, but saw that the Geometry Wars: Galaxies for Wii and DS were selling at 16 USD each. They typically sell for around 30 to 35 USD each, so it was a good bargain. Snapped them up immediately!

More to get i think....

Wii Fit

2008-05-31T18:59:00.000-07:00

Jon bought Wii Fit as a birthday present. I love it. Why? Because there are 4 types of exercise you can choose from:

Yoga
Strength Training
Aerobics
Balance Games

Let's Get Started!

Step 1
Turn on the balance board, wait for signal to step on it that Wii can measure your BMI and weight. Needless to say, I scored high on BMI which is bad and I am overweight. What's new?

Step 2
Select your personal trainer female or male. Both are not good looking and do not encourage me to do the work out. It does not matter to me which personal trainer I choose.

Step 3
Select your workout. Simply follow the instructions to begin work out and Wii will measure your performance with point system. You will enjoy your work out if you follow instructions and believe that you can DO IT. I love yoga and strength training. You can really feel the difference. I have a bad sense of balance and failed miserably in aerobics and balance games.

What the difference between normal exercise DVD and Wii Fit?

Wii Fit is more interactive and intuitive. It knows if you are tired or loses balance. Wii Fit has 40 exercises in 4 categories you can choose from. I doubt you have 40 exercises in one DVD.

Well, this is a personal choice. If you prefer the normal exercise DVD which fits your lifestyle, go for it. Meantime, I am considering giving up my Pro Club membership and work out with with Fit Fit (my nickname for Wii Fit).

Those who cannot remember the past ...

2008-05-25T22:47:00.000-07:00

Through the years of working in the model mentioned in my prior post, I've seen the same mistakes being made by various teams over and over again, even with training or "preaching", as one former team member has said, about the possible potholes in the projects.

Well, there is a reason for the reoccurrences of the same mistakes.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

As I was listening to a great mix by DJ Z-Trip called "The Anti-War Mix" (link to the mp3 on Z-Trip's site, the above phrase kept repeating in the mix.

That triggered the idea of this post. Since I have a few more new members to my team, perhaps this can help them in their first few months to start wondering, to start figuring out why things are done in a certain manner? How decisions or actions were made in seemingly overly-paranoid fashion?

Before i continue on, i like to say that i really appreciate my parents' methods, which somehow I'm using with my team of members as well. They would, in the past, say the main point of their message once. They will not punish me if i do not follow it; i guess they expect me to figure it out on my own once i got bitten by the same mistakes.

Throughout my stint in the company, I call this behavior of "let's not listen to experience"/"we can do it differently"/"the project has a fresh new team of members and this won't happen" as a newbie tax. Newbie taxes that just have to occur whenever we get new members/managers into the service.

The thing that the newbies do not realize is that the tax is not only paid by them. The same tax and the repercussions resolutions have to be paid (again) by the oldies. Same mistake, paid multiple times, and one wonder why they do not want the same mistakes to happen again?

Hmm....

Dare I say something?

2008-05-21T00:21:00.001-07:00

Glad to see that Dare's back to blogging regularly again. Even though his blog doesn't cover anything specifically on antimalware or security, his direct tone has been very enjoyable by me.

One of his first posts after his hiatus really highlight the key issues that I've seen as a challenge to my service's quality.

Fundamentally, the development and project management model that were placed on my service had a number of flawed assumptions, which resulted in the series of constant issues.

Firstly, as Dare has mentioned as well, was the fact that there is (and was) a misalignment of goals from the various teams. Regardless of whether the various sub-teams were reporting to the same executive or not, it doesn't remove the fact that my team and myself is focused on one single goal: quality of service in terms of antimalware scanning coverage.

Some teams that utilize the service have other goals; one specifically to do with processing time. We want higher level of coverage; they want increasingly shorter processing time. Now isn't this a major disparity right here?

What are the chances that we can get the features and coverage that we need?

Since most of the upgrades were treated as projects, one can't miss the fact that project members have project goals that implicitly meant if a project complete, they met their goals. Nothing to do with what the service is actually capable of sustaining or improving its coverage or not.

When the majority of the project members want to focus on just completing the project, a single voice of sanity meant one will be treated as someone that is not willing to collaborate, and might be slighted or even disassociated from the project or the service as a result.

Dare's second point was about the undisclosed concerns (read his post for more details!). Indeed, risk mitigation isn't something that any project members would want to bring up as an work effort to look into. This becomes even more of a problem when one team continuously is unable to provide results of quality; or completed on time.

What can be done about this? I always wonder about it. And then something lit in Amsterdam and it hit me... (i'm sure there wasn't any weed influence at all in Amsterdam).

Acknowledge: that something needs to be done, because status quo is not going to be good for any teams or any service. By putting your head in the sand and think that the issues will go away is the worst possible thing one can do. As something perhaps Dr. Phil might say, acknowledge that the model is flawed is the first step.

Listen: Spend time to listen to the folks that really want a quality service. No more brown-noses to cloud your thinking. If you do not want to listen, no one will tell you anything that needs to be worked on anymore.

Talk: Get the team members worked up with a plan and a roadmap. Every single step towards a better future will energize the teams and create a common goal for everyone. That increases the morale and refocuses everyone's efforts. Talk about your strategies, and your limitations. We can work better if we know what your constraints are. Without that, we will assume that there's some other agenda clouding your decision.

Act: Quickly. Any faults along the way must be fixed with immediate speed. Again, the same old soft-landing approach for folks is no longer working. No more soft landing for anyone. Streamline the cohort of distractions that are creating churn for everyone. Redefine communication channels with the goal of speed of communications. Make it specific and clear cut that issues need to be looked at by the ones that matter, rather than a committee or a bunch of committee that manage-by-agreement. That's almost like trying to get an elephant that was described by three blind men. You can't.

Hmm.. i wonder what else...

Using process to cover up incompetence

2008-05-20T23:29:00.001-07:00

I've been reading and enjoying quite a lot of James' blog posts, and a recent theme that he has been bringing up was the fact that companies are using process as a substitute for competence.

It has been quite a sore point of internal discussions for me. Adding this to the idea that documentation catered to the lowest common denominator means that each and every process that were researched for years, which require experience and skills to follow, could suddenly be applied to any Tom, Dick or Harry that they can pick off the street.

That is a dream state, based on flawed foundations. Why would a competent team want to hire any one that they can get off the street? That's not a realistic approach at all.

To divert resources to aim for something that is inherently wrong makes the decision and the process even worse. A cynical point of view is that the business consultants are just creating justification for them to do more of these kind of projects, and to increase their revenue stream.

teh pokemanz knowz ya

2008-05-18T13:18:00.001-07:00

Just did a survey on the Pokemon's website for their two new DS games, and was pleasantly surprised that it was pretty accurate!

That's about right... i think... great for a start.

Wow... great insight indeed!

Hmm... does it know things that i didn't know?

Meowth? Gooooollly!

If you have a DS and you like football....

2008-05-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

You gotta check this trailer of a japanese game now!

It's a combination of all the things i like:
- cartoons
- DS
- football
- and a blatant copying of Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer

In fact... the ending of the trailer looks EXACTLY like... how the final match in Shaolin Soccer ended.

See... don't read..

2008-05-12T23:22:00.000-07:00

My team and I have been going through a few rounds of documentation efforts. You might ask why are we doing multiple rounds? I really don't know why, but every single effort get "completed", dumped on a share that no one really knows where, and the documentation expert, typically a vendor, moved on from this project, and we're back to square one after a few months.

One of the things that I've been constantly fighting a battle with my former manager was the fact that a lot of the things that i'm doing is hard to document down. It's also something that he, and other folks, have labeled as "tribal knowledge".

On one hand, i understand the need to have some baseline of knowledge; on the other hand, it is a challenge to provide an almost infinite amount of variables in a system that doesn't necessarily reproduce the same issues every time you try to do so. So what happens is that I'll offer to show people how i think, in the mind set that you train others to fish, and not just hook a single kind of fish.

I often say..."I'll show you... you go document it."; and one one ever took up that offer. I always wonder why folks just do not want to see it to believe it.

There's no way this monkey in Japan could have been reading up documentation before he start serving customers in the restaurant.

Documentation doesn't mean nothing if one doesn't understand!

nWo is in the house

2008-05-11T18:27:00.001-07:00

Hmmm

A look back... and a glance at the future

2008-05-11T00:46:00.001-07:00

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” - Gandhi

Now that I just have a few more additions to my team, i thought that a look back was due.

Well, the infamous decision made almost three years ago now. Let me just recall how things have gone since then.

First and foremost, i decided that day that the decision makers no longer deserve my acknowledgement anymore. None. Anyone and any group that was linked to that eventual decision is on my ban-list.

But let's get back to the period prior to the fateful day. Back.. Way back. A project that was supposed to be the build-out the fundamentals of the service. It gave me an insight into how things do not work.

With prior experience on the flawed project with practically the same team, Yeah.. my concerns were repeatedly ignored throughout the second project. I was told that it was "good enough", "this is not Office 2003", "get it over with", "will not happen".

Well, if i get a thousand dollars every time one of my concerns become reality, i could be Bill's neighbor by now. Haha.

So who would have known that this model was flawed? Well, almost everyone did. But did they do anything about that knowledge? No. It was not the lack of knowledge, nor intelligence, but the lack of courage by some folks to act in a manner that's required on what they knew. It wasn't ... that failed. Most of the establishment went along with the facade, and even promoted the facade to the rest of the company, and celebrated repeatedly of its success.

Since then, the service have never recovered from the lapse of judgement. Never had a chance at all.

Now that we have a all hell broken loose situation, and eyes and brains and heart are now all staring at the source of the problems, there appears to be a spout of armchair critics that are now saying things like "why didn't you do this...?", "why was this done in this manner?"..

Well, if i get a thousand dollars every time one of these "insightful" questions can be auto-replied with one of my concerns made years ago, i might even be richer than Bill. Haha.

So how did I get it right all along when the higher ups did not? It's not because I have better information; It's also not even because I was smarter.

I just decided to say what I knew to be true. No matter how much my statements had made me suffer in the next two years. No retaliation policy, i seriously wonder about that at times. Even with hindsight, i would have still made the same statements and raised the same concerns. Personally, i rather be right than be part of the cohort.

With the expedited changes recently, there are hopes from the team that things will be better. Perhaps for the new members. Quoting someone... i am too "poisoned". I wonder what will be required to remedy this situation.