The Economist Tackles Complexity in IT

yfnET writes "In recent weeks, The Economist has run a number of articles addressing the ever-increasing complexity of software systems. The magazine, with typical Economist wisdom, casts an eye towards past human endeavors for lessons on how today's IT industry can succeed in dealing with complexity. As part of last month's extensive survey of information technology (see Related Items sidebar), the magazine offers insight on the limits of real-world metaphors, the perils of managing a rat's nest of obsolescent systems, and the need for 'disappearing' technology. And hitting newsstands just today is an overview of development models for increasingly large and unwieldy software projects. Among other things, this article compares the open source model to Microsoft's efforts using a quasi-open license. It also describes the 'agile' programming movement and its potential to keep even the most gigantic of projects under control."

Comments

Complexities aren't going anywhere

[GreenCrackBaby]

For an outsider looking in, perhaps it's easy to look at something like Google's 23-word front page and say "why can't they all be like that!" Too bad most systems need more than one form element to allow the user to interact with the system. Can you imagine someone telling Adobe to reduce their Photoshop interface down to one or two buttons? It would make no sense simply because editing a digital image is far more complex a process than 'search the web for these terms' to a user (though both may have similarly huge code bases behind them).

Complexity in IT isn't going to go away. In fact, I'd argue it is a necessity. There are some tasks that simply require complex systems and those complex systems require complex data and/or complex user interfaces.

Re:Complexities aren't going anywhere

[Billly Gates]

But here is the problem. All the complex systems don't talk to each other.

The IT manager who quit from JP Morgan was a perfect example. You have 450 applications talking to each other and a user calls the helpdesk and demands an answer right away. What caused the problem? Which layer? Which application was doing what to the data?

Microsoft was hot for awhile with the IT managers in corporations because all the dcom/com/ole applications can interact with each and become one. This can help the problem tremendously.

However there is no standard protocal between all the vendors. That needs to change before vendors start with their own proprietary versions that only work with their products.

If an application uses several layers and it screws up there has to be a way to trace and find out what happened.

Perhaps a new opensource protocal could help? I like that idea.

Re:Complexities aren't going anywhere

[GreenCrackBaby]

All the complex systems don't talk to each other.

I'd argue that is a near-impossible task. My background is in billing systems, so I'll give an example from that realm...

Our company makes billing systems that end up producing your telephone bill. Sounds simple, but the billing system alone clocked in at over 6 million lines of code. Then you have the other two big necessary systems: a CSR application (such as Siebel) and a provisioning system. Not to mention hundreds of smaller apps that feed/collect data from each application. You have no idea how complex the infrastructure can get!

But it's not just that complexity. In our billing system, a customer's account was important because we needed to know who to charge for each transaction. In a CSR application, they care about who to contact. In a provisioning app, they care about where the account is physically. This leads to a different approach to designing something as simple as the account structure in the database. It's not something that could be standardized because each application needs to look at the data differently.

There was some hope of standardization with middleware applications like Vitria, but what we found is that we'd spend insane amounts of time building code that translated our account between our billing system and some common model held by the middleware. The complexity didn't go away -- it got worse!

You won't ever see a standard vendor protocol. Not for lack of wanting one, but simply because it's impossible.

A Lot of Silliness, and Two Spectacular Points

[Onimaru]

So a lot of this space was spent explaining to Joseph P. Siquespack, Esq. what a "protocol" was and the like, but there were two points in here that I'm really glad my great-grandboss might be reading:

1. A system should be designed to fail in a predictable way. Much like a car body, it should crumple to protect its most valuable assets, and repairs should have obvious beginnings, middles, and ends.
2. Obsolete systems will cause you more downtime in the end than incremental upgrades. And, what's worse, it will be all at once instead of at 4am twice a month on Saturday morning.

Neither of the above are impossible goals! They can be done with a little thought and elbow grease. And the great part is, they're probably already being done! Next time you're reading over your IT department head's recommendations for a project, call them up and ask WHY. You might be amazed at how awesome the answer is, and it might even persuade you to put away the "my way or the highway" stamp.

How aerospace does it

[Animats]

Aerospace has dealt with high complexity for decades, rather more successfully than the IT industry. Here's how.

• Interface specifications dominate If it doesn't work the way the spec says it does, fix the box, not the spec. If A won't talk to B, run the tests to check compliance with the spec. If you can't tell who's at fault, the spec is broken. This is why you can swap a Pratt and Whitney engine for a Rolls Royce engine.
• The buyer, not the vendor, decides what is a "defect". One of the fundamental problems in IT is that vendors have sole discretion to decide what is a defect and what isn't. That doesn't fly in aerospace.
• Fix blame. In aerospace, people get blamed for screwing up. You do not want your name or the name of your company to appear in an NTSB crash report. If you screw up big time, it will. Mistakes in aerospace are publicized. There's an NTSB database of 140,000 crashes. If it was a hardware failure, the vendor is named.
• Warranties have real meaning Airplanes come with good warranties, and so do all the parts that go into them. Commercial software doesn't.

This runs engineering costs way up, and the life cycles are longer, but in IT, most of the commercial products are sold in large numbers, so you get to spread that engineering cost over a large number of items.

It's time for computing to grow up and accept this kind of discipline. The automotive industry had to accept it in the 1960s, and cars got much better within a decade.

Re:Chinese Slave Labor

[tarunthegreat2]

Of course, I'm feeding a troll here, but India has been on a path to "westernization" for about 200 years now, ever since the British East India Company first set foot on the shores of Calcutta. India alreasy has a "western-style" political and economic system, so STFU. Our laws are based on British Common Law - newsflash - so are American laws. We VOTE our leaders in to power. When two companies have a dispute ove a contract they go to court. When we want to make laws, they have to passed by two houses of parliament. Parliament happens to be this big place where elected representatives gather - to pass laws. Oh, and the unofficial offical language of India is ENGLISH. Imposing this system on a culture which has been transforming and transitioning for the past 1900 years going from Hindu - to Buddhist- To Muslim - to British is going to produce results which will be very different from what a pitifully young country like America isn't used to seeing. So just get the fuck over it. Finally this commitment to free trade that you talk about - The developing countries are ready & waiting for it. It is America that can't handle freeing trade in agriculture and industries like steel. It is USA which puts quotas on garments. Look up any textbook: quota != Free Trade. If you think an Indian software engineer is cheap, wait'll you discover the price of an Indian orange, or an Indian T-shirt. But you won't know about those because trade in those items is not "FREE". And it's not free because the EU and America want it that way. Because Billy Bob with-mouth-in-straw living in a redneck county of a red state just voted the current monkey into the white house. Now go back guarding the bridge, trolly-wolly.