YourDone: Dec.1999: ".... enraged population to burn every computer programmer at the stake"greenspun.com : LUSENET : TB2K spinoff uncensored : One Thread |
Conclusion
Perhaps, when the Y2K dust settles, we will discover that the largest and most severe of the unknown-unknown problems was the human, sociological reaction to Y2K technological problems. Bank runs and food hoarding fall into the category of "known-unknown" problems -- i.e., we know that there is a potential for such problems to occur, but the extent and timing of such problems is unknown. Beyond this, though, what if ... Y2K causes an enraged population to march on Washington, burn the city to the ground, and lynch every politician in sight? What if Y2K leads an enraged population to burn every computer programmer at the stake, thereby making it impossible fix any of the technological problems? What if a new religious messiah emerges from a Y2K crisis and convinces his followers to launch a religious jihad on the rest of the human race? What if ... the list is endless, and is indeed limited entirely by our own imagination at this point.YOURDON: Y2K: I Know What I Know
During these final days of 1999, I've been getting a rash of phone calls and e-mail messages from newspaper journalists, TV reporters, and concerned individuals, asking for my "latest thinking" and/or "final predictions" about Y2K -- as if there is some last-minute epiphany that will make the outcome undeniably clear to everyone. But while there are now more and more frequent reports and updates on the Y2K situation, I don't think the "big picture" has changed much at all during the past year. I still think that the readiness/compliance claims being made by many organizations and government agencies are optimistic at best. I still don't think that the U.S. can escape the effects of serious Y2K problems elsewhere in the world, given the nature of today's interconnected global economy. And I still don't think the consequences of Y2K disruptions will be overcome within the short time-frame of a three-day "winter storm." I'm sure that critics can find details to quibble with, but in general, I still stand by the arguments and conclusions in the various Y2K essays that you can find in the articles and essays section of this site.
One of the things that has amazed me throughout the Y2K episode is the ease with which government spokesmen, industry leaders, television reporters, pundits, analysts, consultants, and individual citizens assert that they know such-and-such, or that they can prove that such-and-such is a fact. Having been educated as a mathematician [1], and having spent a career working with computer software, I tend to be cautious about such strong statements. Just as much of our traditional mathematics is based on certain axioms -- e.g., the axiom that two parallel lines will never meet, even if extended indefinitely -- it seems to me that many of the arguments and conclusions about Y2K are based on some basic axioms -- i.e., things that we assume to be true, even though we will never be able to prove them to be true.
SNIP
And what I know about large projects in large companies is that a substantial percentage of them are finished late, and/or over budget, and/or riddled with bugs. An individual computer project, or an individual company, may beat the odds from time to time; but I know that over the past 40 years, which is roughly the period of time that measurements have been kept about software projects, roughly 25% of large projects have been canceled before completion, and only about 60% have been delivered on time or ahead of schedule. I also know, from long experience, that software project managers have been notoriously optimistic about meeting their deadlines, right up until the last moment -- quite literally until the day before the deadline, in some cases. Further, I know that software project managers have been notoriously optimistic about the absence of bugs (or "glitches," as they are frequently called in Y2K discussions), regardless of how much or how little testing they have done. And finally, I know, from visits to hundreds of companies around the world, that the political environment in most large software projects makes it difficult, if not impossible, for bad news to percolate up to the top of the organization. At best, the bad news is filtered as it rises through each layer of management; at worst, it is completely squelched.
SNIP
But let's leave the cynicism aside, and take the statement at face value; given the industry's mediocre track record for the past 40 years, how is it possible that 99.9% of the mission-critical systems were actually finished in time for the "ultimate" deadline? One aspect of the apparent contradiction is easily explained, based on the tradeoff between schedule, budget, and bugs that I mentioned above. The initial 1997 estimate for Federal government Y2K repairs by the GAO was approximately $2 billion; the most recent estimate that I saw in September 1999 was approximately $8 billion -- and we don't know how accurate the estimates are for post-Y2K repairs. In the best case, this means that the Federal government managed to achieve the politically crucial objective of finishing its repairs in time, at the expense of the politically acceptable sacrifice of over-spending its budget by a factor of four. Whether we think this is reasonable or unreasonable, whether we think it demonstrates competence or incompetence, is not the issue here; the main point is that one could plausibly argue that the Federal government achieved the spectacular record of 99.9% schedule compliance because it was willing to tolerate whatever budget over-run was necessary.SNIP
SNIP
Here again, there are some things that I know about large software projects. I know, from the extensive work carried out by software metrics gurus like Capers Jones, Howard Rubin, and Larry Putnam, that the software industry has typically had approximately 75 defects per 10,000 lines of "delivered code" (or 0.75 defects per function point) -- i.e., software that has been supposedly tested, delivered to the customer, and put into production. And I know, from the reports furnished by such Y2K vendors as Cap Gemini and MatriDigm, that there are between 10 and 100 bugs per 10,000 lines of Y2K-related code that has been remediated and tested. In short, we know that under normal project conditions, software is delivered in a state that is far from error-free; and we know that under normal Y2K project conditions, the best we can hope for is that a Y2K project will have roughly 7 times fewer bugs than a normal project. Indeed, it's more likely that we'll find that a Y2K project has approximately the same number of bugs as any other kind of software project we've carried out for the past 40 years. In other words, it's deja vu all over again -- a concept that I discussed in more detail in an essay by the same title.
But we do know that one thing is different about Y2K projects: the deadline is immovable. Thus, it's far more likely that the deadline (December 31st, 1999) was determined first, and the other project parameters -- budget and bugginess -- were considered second. That is, the typical Y2K project manager was probably told, "You're starting your project tomorrow morning, and since you have to be finished by December 31, 1999, that means you have no more than X calendar days. Tell me how much money and how many people you need to finish in time." In the worst case, the project manager is told, "You have X calendar days, and we can only spare Y programmers to work on the project, and we can only squeeze Z dollars out of the budget. Figure out how to make all of this work." Notice that these "marching orders" don't say anything about the number of defects -- but if you constrain the schedule and the budget and the human resources available to work on the project, then the only "variable" left to the manager's discretion is the number of bugs. Or, to put it another way, if the project manager finds that he's stuck with a Y2K project that has to be finished in half the amount of time that should have been allowed, and with half the number of programmers, and half the amount of money, the only way to make up for the shortfall (over and above the inevitable "death march" behavior of heavy overtime throughout the project) is to reduce the amount of time that should have been allocated for testing, and thus suffer the consequences of higher-than-normal bugs.
SNIP
Conclusion
Perhaps, when the Y2K dust settles, we will discover that the largest and most severe of the unknown-unknown problems was the human, sociological reaction to Y2K technological problems. Bank runs and food hoarding fall into the category of "known-unknown" problems -- i.e., we know that there is a potential for such problems to occur, but the extent and timing of such problems is unknown. Beyond this, though, what if ... Y2K causes an enraged population to march on Washington, burn the city to the ground, and lynch every politician in sight? What if Y2K leads an enraged population to burn every computer programmer at the stake, thereby making it impossible fix any of the technological problems? What if a new religious messiah emerges from a Y2K crisis and convinces his followers to launch a religious jihad on the rest of the human race? What if ... the list is endless, and is indeed limited entirely by our own imagination at this point.But in that case, one question will remain: would the unknown-unknown human reaction have been less severe and less unpredictable if the governments of the world had made more of an effort to tell their citizens the truth about Y2K, rather than dismissing it as the proverbial "bump in the road"? Or, to put it another way: will the unknown-unknown human reaction -- e.g., combinations of panic, terror, frustration, rage, and betrayal -- be worse if the technologically-oriented Y2K problems turn out to be more severe, widespread, and long-lasting than the governments of the world have led us to believe? Hopefully, we'll be able to look back upon all of this at some point in the future, and make an objective judgment about whether our leaders and our governments did the right thing with Y2K. As for me -- an individual citizen, responsible only for myself and my family -- I can only say that I wish I had been told the truth. I know enough about Y2K to be strongly convinced that I have not been told the truth -- and I know enough about the philosophy of government to know that, common practice notwithstanding, the ideal standard is one of truthfulness. Even Richard Nixon, a President whose truthfulness was severely questioned, proposed a standard that I believe would have led to a more successful Y2K outcome than what we will be facing in a few days:
"Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth -- to see it like it is, and tell it like it is -- to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth."Amen.Richard M. Nixon, Presidential nomination acceptance speech, Miami, Aug. 9, 1968.
SNIP
-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000
To see how Yourdon played to both sides, in the article above he links NOT to his "public-side" Y2k articles in this first link, but rather to the I.T. ones which show show a far more moderate (though still pessimistic) other face:http://www.yourdon.com/articles/articlesummary.html#Y2%20essays
http://www.yourdon.com/articles/articlesummary.html
-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000.
Then came "the Lessons" from Your-Toast-Ed in Computerworld on Jan 24, 2000. The "lesson" for private people outiside I.T. was that Mr. Toas Y2k 35 year expert had a "different line" for another audience.
The Lessons of Y2K Success
SNIP
There will be several Y2K postmortems in the coming months. Some will assess the costs of Y2K projects, and the damages associated with Y2K failures. Others will investigate the puzzling success of less-prepared countries and unprepared small businesses. But the most useful form of postmortem for IT managers will focus on the reasons for success, especially in the organizations that took Y2K seriously, spent an enormous amount of time and energy on remediation and testing, and subsequently discovered that it had all paid off.SNIP
Before we congratulate ourselves too enthusiastically for our Y2K success, we should admit that in many cases, we failed from a budgetary perspective, and it's too early to tell whether we failed in terms of bugs. Many large organizations spent two to three times their original estimates; the U.S. government, for example, estimated in 1997 that it would spend roughly $2 billion on Y2K repairs, but that gradually rose to approximately $8 billion by last fall. That's a polite way of saying that it exceeded its original budget by a factor of four. As for bugs: Most organizations wait for a year of operational experience before they make final judgments about the quality of the delivered system. Enthusiastic as we may be, it's a little too early to tell how many Y2K bugs will eventually be uncovered.
SNIP
it's a little too early to tell how many Y2K bugs will eventually be uncovered.
WHICH IS VERY ,,,,VERY DIFFERENT FROM "I WAS WRONG". IT'S I WAS WRONG "BUTT"...AND "WITH EXCUSES".... and again show that he can not even begin to consider **y2k projects** were not full scale software projects (of course not...it was his "SALES PITCH" to I.T. for 2 years.
But one thing is clear: most organizations did deliver and deploy Y2K-compliant systems in time for the non-negotiable Jan. 1 deadline -- and most systems ran well enough to keep from crashing immediately. Even this aspect of success was better than we might reasonably have expected because everyone achieved it, with no spectacular explosions, nuclear meltdowns, power blackouts, toxic leaks, plane crashes, or bank failures -- anywhere. So I ask again: How did we pull it off?
When I first predicted a pessimistic Y2K outcome during a conference presentation a few years ago, an IT manager in the back of the room shouted out loudly enough for everyone to hear: "This time it will be different!" I disagreed with him at the time, but I'm beginning to think he was right. This time, we really did get senior management's involvement and support, all the way up to, and including, the CEO and the board of directors. This time, we really did perform a triage to separate the "must-do" Y2K requirements from the "should-do" and the "could-do" categories. This time, we really did perform risk management and contingency planning -- because this time, every decision-maker in the organization understood that failure to do so could result in bankruptcy -- as compared to the typical IT project failure, which is embarrassing, but not fatal. This time, we insisted that unit managers follow a disciplined project-management methodology, which included filling out weekly status reports, with detailed information about progress, problems and risk. I know of one large company that used the same project-management methodology they had developed for every other project -- but this time, they insisted that it be used, and they sent the CEO to talk to any team-leader who balked at the paperwork involved.
This leads to an obvious question: If we could do it this time, why not do it next time, and every time? In many companies, success with Y2K could become the role model for success in all future IT projects.
SNIP
SNIP
-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000.
Something is WRONG with you... seriously, seriously, SERIOUSLY, WRONG with you.
-- (u.sik@very.sik), July 24, 2000.
Something is WRONG with you... seriously, seriously, SERIOUSLY, WRONG with you. -- (u.sik@very.sik), July 24, 2000.ANOTHER SHEETED WONDER. .....TELL THAT TO ............HISTORIANS.
YOURDON....NOT I....CHOSE TO GO DOWN WITH ***HIS*** Y2K FEAR SHIP OF FOOLS. TO THIS DAY, HE IS TRYING TO FIND A WAY TO "MAKE A BUCK" OFF THE "CRISIS" HE KEPT GOING LONG AFTER EVEN THE OBTUSE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TALKED ABOUT (AND YOURDON DERIDED) A "3 DAY STORM".
AND..........IN YOUR SPARE TIME..........ESAD.
-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000.
Write it in a book cpr. For the historians, don't ya know. It's not ethical that you keep clogging this forum.
-- Lars (lars@indy.net), July 24, 2000.
.....TELL THAT TO ............HISTORIANS. -- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000.Hope it doesn't disappoint anyone too much, but I really doubt historians are really going to give a rat's patoot about this whole episode. It may be a footnote, but not much more. Which means -- sorry -- no footnotes to the footnotes in history for anyone, whichever "side" they wound up on.
-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), July 24, 2000.
Hey..."LARS": WHAT FUCKING ***ETHICS** ARE INVOLVED IN A WEB "FORUM"??get a clue. THIS FORUM'S NAME IS "TIME BOMB 2000 UNCENSORED". IT COMES FROM THE YEAR 2000 COMPUTER DATE "TIME BOMB" AND YOURDON'S BOOK.
-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000.
Charlie, you just demostrated your own ethics by your last statement. After you get done killing this place, where are you going to go?
-- Take your Pills (You are sick.@nutcase. realestate), July 24, 2000.
Hey......sickie: ETHICS LIKE THIS??LINK
http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003Xwn
-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000.
Or "ETHICS" like taking email names and SPAMMING for business??http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003Xnr
-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000.
CPR,
Nicely done, sir. And I see you've angered the usual suspects. Perhaps they will some day deal with their lack of ethics in the matter over participating in and condoning the terrorising of women and children, the stressing of families, the fascism portrayed at the Hysterium, and the general misleading of the less informed-educated- experienced. Then, perhaps, they will be in a position to pass judgement upon you.
Kudos on excellent work - though I must confess you should provide a link to this - how else will we know it's real? ;) Also, I don't remember hearing much from this "Ed Yourdon," are you certain this isn't some invented handle? used by a polly impersonator? ;)
Keep up the excellent work, sir.
Vindicated Regards,
Andy Ray
-- Andy Ray (andyman633@hotmail.com), July 24, 2000.
See ALL THE TRASH AT THE Y2k EY COMPOST MOUND:
LINK-to- ALL-THE-PAST
http://www.yourdon.com/books/y2k2020/index.html
-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000.
There is also some satisfaction in knowing that outside the Doom Zombie Cages at EZ TB II, ED "35 years of expertise" YourToasted can't even get people interested in his current "thinking".link< /a>
http://www.coolboard.com/myboards.cfm/oid=916043792207974
-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 24, 2000.