Question: Where is the C in E-Type Systems? Answer: IN Tent Making

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Question Where is the C in E-Type
Systems?Answer IN Tent Making

• Patrick M. Bailey, MS

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Discussion Points

• Scope
• Background
• Information systems
• Is there a link?
• Seeking Answers
• The nature of E-Systems
• Tent making opportunities
• With the user
• Between developers
• Software engineering and Faith

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IS Professionals
IS professionals must have a broad business and
real world perspective. IS professionals must
have strong analytical and critical thinking
skills. IS professionals must have interpersonal
communication and team skills and have strong
ethical principles. IS professionals must design
and implement information technology solutions
that enhance organizational performance.
Source IS 2002 Model Curriculum and Guidelines
for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information
Systems Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM) Association for Information Systems
(AIS) Association of Information Technology
Professionals (AITP)
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Attitude
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact
of attitude on life. It is more important than
appearance, giftedness or skill. .I am convinced
that life is 10 what happens to me and 90 how I
react to it. -Charles Swindol The way you
act, your feelings, and even your private
opinions will influence your team. - Watts
Humphrey, TSP, Leading a Development
Team Welcome changing requirements, even late
in development... This is a statement of
attitude. Robert C. Martin, Agile Software
Development
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We asked professed Christians in the work force
about the link between their faith and what they
do.
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Initial Questions

• How long have you been a software engineer or
  involved in software engineering?
• What best describes your professional life?
• What best describes your organization?
• What best describes your view of integrating
  faith with the practice of software engineering?
• What best describes the reason for your
  participation in this study?
• What best describes your history as a Christian?
• Briefly describe any specific area where your
  faith has influenced how you develop software.
• Skill sets C, C, Java, Perl, COBOL, Project
  management, Linux, etc

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Involvement in SW Development
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Motivation
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Other Reasons to Participate

• Just because you asked
• I have some sense of how my faith influences my
  practice, but am interested in how others
  approach the area
• I value the education I received at Calvin and I
  respect their desire to do the study. If my
  involvement can assist in any way, I would be
  glad to participate.
• Just for grins

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Where does faith play a role?
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Sample Comments

• It affects how I view my work to ensure it is of
  the highest quality to bring glory to God. My
  faith leads me to be more patient with my team
  and our testing department. It has given me
  courage to admit to mistakes and aim for
  correction.
• My work ethic has probably been influenced by my
  faith, but that's about it
• Frankly, I don't see any connection between one's
  faith and software development
• I prayed for my hacks to work, and they did!

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Phone Interview Team

• Jared Staal (07)
• Information Systems
• Jessica Holtrop (07)
• Communication Arts and Sciences
• Michael Bailey
• Religion

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Basic Approach

• Talk about their daily life and let the Christian
  perspectives naturally evolve from the
  conversation.

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General Observations

• Some reasons why a link is found
• Stewardship
• Craftsmanship (do it for the glory of the Lord)
• Opportunity to witness (tent making)
• Hiring practices
• Technical ability carries the most weight
• Character is important, but difficult to measure
• Variety of methods exists, but less than perfect
• General communication ability is critical
• No one said explicitly they consider a persons
  faith

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General Observations

• Development platforms
• Open source is appreciated for the community of
  giving
• Open source is not always preferred.
• The problem with open source is that an
  application can have the focus of a lot of
  developers, but if it is no longer exciting,
  support begins to wane.
• Im not adamant about everything being open
  source.

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Faith In the Workplace

• I think about what does it mean to do my work and
  do it in excellent ways. Im called to
  excellence and helping teams to do that. I
  continue to wrestle how my faith ought to clearly
  shape the way I do technology.
• Put your focus on building relationships.
• Using my skill is my form of tent making.

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Tent Making in E-Type Systems
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System Types

• S Small systems that can be proven
  mathematically
• P Approximation of a problem. Changes are made
  to come closer to solving the problem. (a chess
  game)
• E Think of the E as in Enterprise Systems
  that live in the real world. The problem they
  solve is likely to change. Acceptance is based
  on perception.

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Lehmans Laws
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Relationships
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• Geeks and suits dont communicate well.
• Geeks and suits dont respect each other.
• Technology people and business people dont trust
  each other

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Users and Technology
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Maybe the problem is

• Human cognition has a problem anecdotal
  thinking comes naturally whereas scientific
  thinking does not Anecdotal associations are so
  powerful that they cause people to ignore
  contrary evidence.
• Michael Schermer, Jama and the Mountebank, Nature
  Magazine, Vol 451, 7 Feb 2008, pg 628

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Imagine several dozen pages of this

1. The system shall allow entry of a patrons
   library card number.
2. The system shall flag patron records as
   non-useable if there is an overdue book
   associated with the account.
3. The system shall flag patron records as
   non-useable if there is an overdue book
   associated with the account.
4. The system shall allow entry of a book
   identification number for checkout.
5. The system shall maintain the status of a book.
   Statuses include available, checked-out, reserved
   and destroyed.
6. The system shall maintain the status of a video.
   Statuses include available, checked-out,
   reserved, being-viewed, on-order and destroyed.
7. The system shall mark a book as checked out for a
   patron provided the patron ID is entered, the
   patron record is not flagged and the book status
   is available.
8. The system shall mark a video as checked out for
   a patron provided the patron ID is entered, the
   patron record is not flagged and the video status
   is available.
9. The system shall apply a date two weeks from the
   current date as the due date for a book.
10. The system shall apply a date one week from the
    current date as the due date for a video.

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Compared to

• When a patron brings books or videos to the
  checkout desk, the clerk will do the following
• Request the library card from the patron and
  enter the number into the system.
• The system will let the clerk know if the patron
  may check out materials.
• The clerk will enter the identification number of
  each book and video into the system.
• The system will create a receipt listing material
  checked out and each due date. Books are allowed
  to be checked out for two weeks and videos are
  allowed to be checked out for one week.

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Ship first, test later.
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Testing View Differences
I Internal View The tendency of the person
responding is to have a thorough knowledge of the
code itself before determining a testing
approach. S Specification View The
respondent places greater value on the design and
specifications of a system to determine a testing
approach. B Business Value The respondent
has more of an expert customer/user view of how
to test software. Further, economic factors are
a significant factor in their consideration. R
Real World/ Randomness The respondent
believes that most things are unpredictable and
that testing in the real world is typically the
most likely approach to discovering the majority
of faults or patterns. This does not necessarily
imply recklessness.
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Project Mgrs I S B R
1 0 11 7 3
2 3 10 6 2
3 6 4 10 1
4 1 11 7 2
5 1 7 7 6
6 4 4 10 3
7 1 4 15 1
8 11 4 2 4
9 2 2 8 9
10 5 5 4 7
Totals 34 62 76 38
SW Developers I S B R
1 6 14 2 6
2 5 15 3 5
3 7 8 10 3
4 3 14 3 8
5 2 10 8 8
6 4 17 6 1
7 2 10 13 3
8 19 0 2 7
9 4 8 8 8
10 10 5 9 4
Sub Totals 62 101 64 53
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Agile Practices

• Business people make the business decision,
  technical people make the technical decision
• Limit work to 40 hours a week
• Determine the quality desired first (test driven
  development)
• Iterative development (better communication)

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Talk the Talk

• O Lord, I have never been eloquentI am slow of
  speech and tongue.
• Then the Lords anger burned against Moses and
  he said What about your brother Aaron the
  Levite? I know he can speak well..I will help
  both of you speak and will teach you what to do.
• NIV, Exodus 410-16

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Mike McIntosh

• Against Optimism
• humble and human share the same Latin root
  humus. To be humble and to be human is to know
  oneself to be of the earth and not one of the
  gods. The Hebrews knew God made Adam from the
  earth. Such humility makes us teachable and
  ready to learn from our mistakes.

Mike McIntosh Project Manager, Amway
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Tent Making Between Developers
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What is the value of one line of code?
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Expertise
Since the cost of fixing a defect often increases
the longer the defect goes undetected, early
detection can reduce redevelopment and rework
costs. For example, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(a NASA software supplier) estimates it has saved
7.5 million over 300 inspections, yielding an
average cost savings of 25,000 per inspection
2.
Tyran, Craig K. et al, Improving Software
Inspections with Group Process Support
COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM September 2002/Vol. 45,
No. 9 pg 87
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Examples of Christian Influence

• A rule of thumb for reviews
• Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your
  mouths, but only what is helpful for building
  others up according to their needs, that it may
  benefit those who listen.
• Ephesians 429

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Pair Programming
    9 Two are better than one,        because
they have a good return for their work     10
If one falls down,        his friend can help
him up.        But pity the man who falls
       and has no one to help him up!
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2 John 12

• I have much to write to you, but I do not want to
  use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you
  and talk with you face to face, so that our joy
  may be complete.

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More than data interfaces
Nightly feed
Mainframe Database
The system we are building.
Report data
Updated Records
Web server
Report Request
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Maintenance

• Some perception that something is finished.
• Up to 75 of a system is developed after it is
  finished
• Programmer ratio reduction of 7 to 1
• Often entry level developers
• Maintenaners spend approximately 50 of their
  time studying code
• Go from different pockets of ownership to full
  ownership
• Pride
• Not exciting
• Not as challenging

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Tent Making with Him
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Some challenges we consider

• You have a lot of young people making a lot of
  money who care more about themselves than helping
  others, explained one Internet CEO. Maybe so,
  but such an explanation misses the broader ethos
  of cyber culture. High-tech endeavors are
  usually organized around short-term goals and
  immediate practical needs ... Cyber culture is so
  focused on the here and now that it implicitly
  rejects the human need for a long-term vision,
  let alone a moral compass.
• -Quentin J. Schultze, Habits of the High Tech
  Heart

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Ken Shafer

• design is His. Stewardship is ours. Software
  is not an artifact to be created where in our
  mind we own the software product. Rather,
  software and its development is a means of
  cultivating an awaremenss of who we are and what
  role we are to play in a Master Plan.

Ken Shafer Consultant, Indianapolis, IN
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Coming Closer to Him
There is the creativity link. I see creativity
being part of joy. It is certainly an attribute
of God. Realizing how explicit you must be,
gives you some appreciation for the wisdom and
sovereignty of God. - Response to
questionnaire I talk to God while I develop
software, because He is smarter than I am and has
a better plan. Phone interview comment.
ASCII Values ASCII Values ASCII Values
Binary Decimal Character
01000001 65 A
01000010 66 B
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Craftsmanship
"Sometime look at a novice workman and compare
his expression with that of a craftsman whose
work you know is excellent   The craftsman isn't
ever following a single line of instruction. He's
making decisions as he goes along.  For that
reason he'll be absorbed and attentive to what
he's doing even though he doesn't deliberately
contrive this.  His motions and the machine are
in a kind of harmony.  He isn't following any set
of written instructions because the nature of the
material at hand determines his thoughts and
motions, which simultaneously change the nature
of the material at hand.  The material and his
thoughts are changing together in a progression
of changes until his mind's at rest at the same
time the material's right. Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance
craftsman or craftsmen appear at least 41
times in the New International Version of the
Bible. Dynamic Link, pg 17
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Data Stewardship

• Collecting information is expensive
• Duplicating it is cheap

Ref Database In Peril, Nature 435, 1010 - 1011
(22 Jun 2005) New
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Managing Agreement
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Agreement on what we want
Religion
CULTURE
Leadership
Tradition
Role Specification
Strategic planning
Role Modeling
Measurements
Management
Authority
incentives
Power
Responsibility
SOP
Force
Agreement on how the world works.