Digital Digitalis

One of the parts of my job which is moderately interesting -- and this will give a good sense of how uninteresting much of it is -- involves the creation of a monthly report that's verbally presented to my group's manager -- what in my company is called a 'second line' manager. The content of the presentation was, when I took it, four charts and two graphs. The first two charts showed the number of problem records opened in the prior month and the number of problem records closed in the prior month; the first graph showed the same information, essentially, but including the last six months. The second set of three had essentially the same content, but for a different kind of information. After doing it a couple of months, I added one graph at the start of each section -- putting my imprimatur on it, as it were. About three months ago, the SL manager decided she wanted to get more, and for the last two months we've been trying to create it. I came up with a draft, and sent it to her, which she promptly sent to my group's manager; I had forgotten that my organization is rigidly hierarchical. [Insert snide comment here.] So, we're still working on that.

But lately I've been wondering. One of the things we like to push, as a Big Picture High Concept sort of thing, at my company is the idea of On Demand information -- which seems to have a very fluid definition, and surely involves a lot of arm-waving. To me, it means that data is gathered as it occurs and agglomerated into information, and then into presentations, as it's needed. I'm sure that some information is too complex to be agglomerated on the fly, but for much of it -- particularly things like my monthly chart -- it ought to be possible to just go out and get it, right now, real time. Why don't we do that?

Well, part of the reason is the chasm between what marketing people say and what technical people do. In technical discussions, this is sometimes abbreviated as YMMV, for Your Mileage May Vary, which in turn is shorthand for You may not get the same results, though they ought to look generally the same. In other words, it's possible to have On Demand information if (or at the mathematically inclined might put it, IFF) you've already made the infrastructure changes necessary to flow the information into nice limpid pools that are available on big honkin' servers which are connected by Way High Fast connection pipes to wherever your need for the data is. If you haven't done all that and have all that -- and we don't -- then you won't be seeing the On Demand stuff any time soon. Put another way, On Demand is more likely to be what's sometimes called Fedex response -- when you absolutely positively need it...by tomorrow.

But another reason is that for all of the culture of sexy digital wonderment that my company likes to encloak itself with, we're just as likely -- at least, in the trenches -- to do things the way that we've done them for years. We're used to them, it works, it costs time and money to change, so why bother? We don't drink the corporate Kool-Aid. And the only thing that's going to get us going -- to give us the digitalis push -- is if someone arrives to run the organization who's seen it done better elsewhere, and wants that here. Otherwise, we'll stay as we are -- just good enough. And thats by our own definition, too. I wish we did better than that, which is why I make little changes where I can. I know its picayune, but it's the least I can do -- and as I like to say, I always do the least I can do.