Erik on Software

Past Book Review (November 13, 2003): "The Secrets of Consulting"

Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully, by Gerald M. Weinberg, Dorset House Publishing, 1986, reposted here:

What exactly is consulting? And how does one consult successfully? This informative book attempts to answer these questions in a humorous, easy-to-read style. Throughout this book, Weinberg introduces and explains dozens of consulting laws, rules, and principles - and right from the start, with his laws of consulting laid out, you will be captivated by Weinberg's philosophy:

• The First Law of Consulting: In spite of what your client may tell you, there's always a problem.

• The Second Law of Consulting: No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem.

• The Third Law of Consulting: Never forget they're paying you by the hour, not by the solution.

• The Fourth Law of Consulting: If they didn't hire you, don't solve their problem.

Some of my many favorite laws, rules, and principles:

• The Bolden Rule: If you can't fix it, feature it.

• The Lone Ranger Fantasy: When the clients don't show their appreciation, pretend that they're stunned by your performance - but never forget that it's your fantasy, not theirs.

• Marvin's Second Great Secret: Repeatedly curing a system that can cure itself will eventually create a system that can't.

Have you seen the new poster that reads "Consulting: If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem."? Weinberg would not agree with this statement - his Sixth Law of Pricing says that if they don't like your work, don't take their money. An alternative to these types of posters? Blow up the cartoon illustrations in this book and hang them in your office.

New Book Review: "Your Brain and Business"

New book review for Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders, by Srinivasan S. Pillay, FT Press, 2011, reposted here:

It is apparent that one has a controversial text on their hands when some reviewers assign the label "too scientific", and some reviewers assign the label "pseudoscientific". Reading through the other reviews here, if I had not recently read this book myself I might be hard-pressed to find any answers to what the author provides in his discussion, and rather than make a decision to read this book based on facts, give up trying due to lack of information.

According to Pillay, "at the end of this book, the coach or executive will have a good idea of several concepts in brain science that can be applied to his or her own coaching relationships and interventions so as to add to the available tools for coaching." The author later elaborates by noting that "these interventions are a reframing of conventional  coaching methodologies but they also add new insights. At a time when leaders are tiring of old concepts and are therefore not receptive to them, this reframing can be very helpful in informing the appropriate coaching, management, or leadership plan."

The author explains his view that there are 6 basic ways in which brain science can enhance understanding within the executive environment: repackaging advice with biological explanations rather than psychological jargon, decreasing threats by depersonalizing explanations of behavior, debunking myths when brain science provides a different explanation than personal or organizational psychology, providing further insights and evidence beyond what has been traditionally provided in the past, providing a system for targeted interventions, and developing coaching protocols and tools.

On several occasions throughout the text, the author mentions that since research is an ongoing effort, although the explanations he provides are based on current research, some of the brain science addressed here is bound to change. Many of the insights Pillay provides are based on functional brain imaging, which examines how the brain works when it is presented with a task or challenge as a given individual lies inside an MRI scanner. As the author explains, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures brain blood flow as a correlate of brain cell (neuronal) activity, is the technological focus.

In my opinion, "Your Brain and Business" is one of the most creative business texts I have read in quite some time, and there are a number of passages that I plan to revisit. However, the number and location of dog ears created while reading this text reminds me that some of my interest waned for the last two chapters. Some of the material presented in this latter section would have best been presented earlier in the text, since some of it would have been helpful as the author provided the groundwork of his presentation, and some of it unfortunately is a bit repetitive.

That said, several takeaways especially resonated with me as a consultant and an individual outside the workplace. The amygdala, which is found deep inside the brain and lights up when presented with something fearful, picks up fear signals unconsciously without the conscious brain knowing anything about it. The conscious brain requires at least 30 milliseconds to register images, for example, but the unconscious emotional processor can be actively engaged even if negative office chatter or radio talk shows are in the background and not being paid attention.

The second such aspect that especially resonated with me is the discussion on optimism that the author provides. As the author explains, "when people hear the word 'optimism', they roll their eyes. In this economy, with the difficulties of balancing home and work life and making ends meet, just the idea of optimism seems tiring to most. Many business leaders are practical, and they believe that optimism is for the birds." Current research, however, demonstrates that "optimism builds the brain's connections differently than realism and provides relief from a burning, red-hot amygdala."

The third, in chapter 5 ("The Challenge Prior to Change: How Brain Science Can Bring Managers and Leaders from Idea to Action Orientation"), is that regardless of the emphasis many business people place on removing feeling or emotion from decision making, the brain's accountant (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) is missing vital information if these are left out. The accountant determines the level of action required for a situation by examining risk and reward value, but these are in turn assessed by short-term memory, long-term memory, as well as by emotion.

In my experience as a consultant, it is clear that if one is to use the material provided in this book in some manner within the workplace as discussed by the author, it will need to be tailored to the individual just like any other mechanism. While some may prefer biological explanations over the psychological, there are others who prefer the psychological, and some of course will not respond to either or prefer other alternate explanations when it comes to coaching.

However, if the reader does not get too distracted by the abundance of brain terminology, and they are looking for material on these topics, my expecation is that many will find something to add to their daily toolboxes, counterparts to tools such as those discussed in books like "More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant's Tool Kit" by Gerald M. Weinberg (see my review). Well recommended to anyone looking for explanatory balance on these topics to aid them both in their careers and in their lives outside the workplace.

New Book Review: "Million Dollar Speaking"

New book review for Million Dollar Speaking: The Professional's Guide to Building Your Platform, by Alan Weiss, Ph.D., McGraw-Hill, 2011, reposted here:

As Alan Weiss states in his preface, this book was written for the professional career speaker (one who gets paid to speak), even though "amateur" speaking is also a worthwhile endeavor and an activity that the author recommends pursuing. After discussing the trade, the author discusses marketing, fee rates, and career management, followed by numerous topics associated with career growth and career challenges. If you have read other texts written by Weiss, you will find the same high degree of practical advice offered in this work. Some of the advice provided easily applies to areas of the consulting profession on which the author has written extensively in other books, but bear in mind that this book concentrates on professional speaking.

As always, a review in such a small amount of space is difficult for a work such as this, since Weiss covers a lot of ground and there is very little of the filler content that many business books seem to possess these days. This reviewer especially appreciated chapters entitled "Establishing Your Market", "Establishing Fees", "Lean and Mean", and "Yawn: Passive Income". In addition to the practical advice that Weiss offers, the other qualities to which this reviewer is attracted is his humor and occasional sarcasm, together with his originality. In the opinion of this reviewer, it is the many succinct lists and original line diagrams the author provides that especially demonstrates this originality, and always provide value to the reader seeking to understand the material rather than simply going through the motions of learning.

For example, in the first chapter referenced, which asks questions such as "Who are the members of your audience?", "Whose actions and behaviors do you wish to improve?", "Who are your buyers?", and "Whose condition can you improve by appearing in front of those audiences?", the author does not just talk about the three elements that are required to speak successfully, he draws lines representing market need, competency, and passion, and asks "Where do these paths intersect?". And in the second chapter referenced, Weiss visually shows how fees can surpass value as reputation or brand increase after remarking that "I once thought that as value increased, fees could increase. I was incalculably wrong. The lines actually cross as trust and a brand are developed, because people expect to get what they pay for!"

List favorites of this reviewer include "40 Ways to Increase Your Fees", "Five Facts to Challenge Your Assumptions About Bureaus", "Techniques for Professional, Honest Feedback", "The Six Rules and Eight Steps for Creating a Speech", "15 Conditions that Support Raising Fees", and "20 Great Ways to Engage Almost Any Audience". Read this book alongside texts in this genre by other authors to get a balanced view. This reviewer also recommends the following books by the same author: "Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional's Guide to Growing a Practice", "Life Balance: How to Convert Professional Success into Personal Happiness", and "How to Establish a Unique Brand in the Consulting Profession: Powerful Techniques for the Successful Practitioner" (see my reviews).

Counterpoint: "A doctor's note for virulent consultants"

One of the most entertaining articles I have read in quite some time was published in the Financial Times earlier this week. Entitled "A doctor's note for virulent consultants", author Andrew Hill quotes "a respected captain of industry" as saying that "consultants are 'a virus': let one in and you infect the whole organisation". Two sentences later, Hill discloses that he actually agrees with this statement.

Interesting metaphor. So why does Hill agree with this statement? He gives the following reasons:

• Viruses cannot exist alone.
• Viruses can mutate into different strains.
• Viruses multiply.
• All living things are susceptible to viruses.
• Viruses endure.

The connotation here is obviously very negative. But are all five of these reasons actually negative? No, this is not the case.

Viruses cannot exist alone. The author writes that "a consultancy without clients is a contradition in terms: it would simply be a collection of smart people nattering to each other about strategy". Oh? And what would one of the clients be without their customers? Exactly. They would cease to exist.

Viruses can mutate into different strains. Hill points out the fact that management consultancies have "mutated" over time, and even lists various "strains" of consultancies that offer specialties in different areas. These mutations are nothing more than variations of mergers and acquisitions that traditional firms experience. And the strains of "strategy", "marketing", "operations, "customer service", and "information technology" that the author lists? Sounds like a list of departments within a firm, does it not?

Viruses multiply. Finally a good argument (I am clearing my throat in jest as I write this sentence). A consultancy is a virus because they hire large amounts of employees? Nothing different than any other traditional firm that is doing well. And in this economy, how would hiring employees be a bad thing?

All living things are susceptible to viruses. Now the author decides to shift to a higher gear by calling out a "consultancy pandemic". Well, most readers know by now that H1N1 was really not a pandemic, and being alarmist by highlighting the fact that consultancies are now marketing to "fast-growing economies" just does not make sense. Any reasonable investor would want to know that their investments were targeting growth markets.

Viruses endure. Hill starts his explanation of this fifth reason by writing that "consultancies outlive scandal and even the failure of clients". And? There is nothing different here than with traditional firms. Consultancy failure should not arise from client misfortune anymore than a retail chain should go bankrupt because one of their customers have gone south.

As a consultant myself, here are my reasons why good consultancies bring benefit to firms:

• Consultants collaborate with clients.
• Consultants adapt to the needs of clients.
• Healthy consultancies grow.
• Most firms can benefit from consultants.
• Healthy consultancies survive.

If I ever saw an article like this one in The Wall Street Journal, I would end my subscription. The remaining points that Hill makes are nonsensical, and do not take note of the actual history of the consulting profession itself, the best text of which I am personally aware is "The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century", by Christopher D. McKenna. You can find my review in an earlier post on this blog.

In general, my satisfaction as a consultant has been high, and my broad experience in what Hill would call the technology "strain" has brought positive results to clients throughout my career by solving problems, leading teams, improving processes, giving recommendations, and providing advice in systems and software architecture, data architecture, enterprise architecture, and software development.

In "The World's Newest Profession", McKenna explains that much of the way that organizations are currently structured is due to the work of early consultancies. Because consultants are typically exposed to the inner workings of a large number of firms over the course of their careers, they are able to gain a much broader perspective of the industries in which firms exist. And because of this, my work as a consultant has enabled me to share accumulated knowledge with my clients that I might not otherwise have been able to develop.

"Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships: Leadership in Professional Services", by Ross Dawson (see my review in an earlier post), eloquently explains that sharing knowledge with clients should never be feared, and is actually the best way to earn trust; this has been my experience as well.

Past Book Review (January 10, 2009): "The World's Newest Profession"

Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century, by Christopher D. McKenna, Cambridge University Press, 2006, reposted here:

A discussion of the consulting industry from its early origins in the late 1800s is what makes this book unique. The commentary that McKenna offers is superb. And some readers may be interested in the substantial end notes provided for this history, something rarely seen in books of this genre. While management consulting is the focus, a limited discussion of technology consulting is also provided.

The subject of this book is the answer to the question of "just how had the leading management consulting firms come to achieve such a dominant economic and cultural position?" As McKenna explains, "the historical explanation for the dominance of management consulting, as it turns out, was not to be found in the pragmatic choices of university graduates, but in a set of regulatory changes in America during the 1930s, the 1950s, and the 1980s that were bolstered by the strategic development of new markets by the leading management consulting firms."

"American antitrust regulation shielded early consultants from competition from rival professionals even as entrepreneurial firms created new lucrative practices by concentrating on particular market segments[.]" In fact, "this regulatory history helps to explain why most of the leading management consulting firms in the world are American in contrast to the other business professions, like law or accounting, where state regulation did not favor one geographic market over another."

"Remarkably, the regulatory history returned to haunt management consulting firms at the end of the twentieth century because corporate board members had come to rely so heavily on professionals to reduce their corporate liability. Throughout the twentieth century, state regulation, as much as international innovation, first shaped and then reshaped the evolutionary path of management consulting."

Very timely reading, especially in light of the recent (January 2009) revelation that PricewaterhouseCoopers was the auditor of Satyam Computer's doctored accounts. McKenna discusses the seemingly similar (and familiar) case associated with Arthur Andersen and Enron, but not until the ninth chapter, and this is not the focus of the book (there have been other texts solely focused on the Enron case if that is what interests the reader).

This book provides remarkable insight into the consulting industry, and is recommended reading for all consultants, those who are considering consulting as a profession, and all business professionals seeking better understanding of the consulting industry.

Technology == Salvation ?

Due to service disruption with my print subscription to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) this past week, I was not aware of the interview with Peter Thiel entitled "Technology = Salvation" by Holman W. Jenkins Jr. in last weekend's edition until today. Thiel was one of the co-founders of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, and now serves as president of Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund that he founded in 1998.

Thiel offers some interesting perspectives in the interview of interest to the technology community. Some excerpts:

• Except for computers and the Internet, the idea that we're experiencing rapid technological progress is a myth.
• "People don't want to believe that technology is broken...Pharmaceuticals, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology - all these areas where the progress has been a lot more limited than people think. And the question is why."
• "The big variable that [Bernanke, Geithner, and Summers] are betting on is that there's all this technological progress happening in the background. And if that's wrong, it's just not going to work. You will not get this incredible, self-sustaining recovery."
• The great exception is information technology, whose rapid advance is no fluke: "So far computers and the Internet have been the one sector immune from excessive regulation."
• Some companies and countries will do better than others. "In China and India," he says, "there's no need for any innovation. Their business model for the next 20 years is copy the West."
• The West, he says, needs to do "new things." Innovation, he says, comes from a "frontier" culture, a culture of "exceptionalism," where "people expect to do exceptional things" - in our world, still an almost uniquely American characteristic, and one we're losing.

The fact that so many comments were posted in response to the online version of this interview in such a short time period demonstrates that there is a lot of interest here, but the substance of most of the comments is unfortunately lacking (probably due in part to the text of the interview being available to the public without a WSJ subscription).

As someone who studied economics as an undergraduate, I agree with Thiel that politics plays a heavy role in how the U.S. economy will play out in coming years. It is difficult enough to predict the future when the markets are able to work things out on their own, but when the government gets involved it is nearly impossible. Of course, I use the term "predict" loosely here - what I am referring to is estimating event probability.

And while I was not overly impressed with Michael E. Raynor's "The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (And What to Do About It)", in my review of the book I noted the following:

Any future strategy, according to the author's explanation of the Strategy Paradox, may fail because the future cannot be predicted: "strategies with the greatest possibility of success also have the greatest possibility of failure". Planning and executing well a strategy does not necessarily increase the chances of success. Instead, companies should hedge their bets by developing practical strategies based on multiple options that respond to the different requirements of several possible futures rather than commitments on singular strategies.

There exists no public talk regarding the development and execution of multiple strategies for the U.S. economy. At present, the driving singular strategy is offshoring work in order to gain very short term profits. Offshoring complete industries will render the U.S. heavily dependent on other countries until the strategy is changed, and it is becoming increasingly clear that this dependence is not feared.

I agree with Thiel that the unfortunate business model that has been the main driver for growth in economies such as China is to "copy the West". The U.S. rebuilding of Japan and Germany following the second world war acted as a powerful catalyst for economic growth, but that growth would have been less probable if it were not for the intelligence and work ethic inherent in those countries.

While it might be true that China is "coming back" rather than "rising up" (as Chinese economist Dr. Peter Zhao Xiao noted in the recent conference I attended), the economic progress in China over the last few decades would have been unlikely if it were not for the vast investments from the West. And one of the resultant problems is that the accompanying knowledge and skills have followed these investments.

As a consultant, I need to be able to keep up with advancements in my field and reinvent myself on a continual basis in order to remain viable. Every year I experience periods of time where I am running in order to learn new skills in order to provide what is best for my clients. Knowledge transfer and mentoring are typical products by design during these periods of time, but the lifetime of each growth spurt is limited.

Applying this running analogy to the U.S. as a whole, there is a mathematical limit to how fast these sprints can be executed, and how long they can endure, when a sizeable part of the end products is also the ability to do the work itself without regard to whether subsequent sprints continue to contain innovation (and there are legal implications when products and processes are copied).

While my field is fortunate in that innovation still occurs, and there continues to be opportunity to advise clients and develop solutions, it is unknown what will happen if U.S. innovation in my field ever ceases. In my opinion, part of the country will be lost.

New Book Review: "Amplifying Your Effectiveness"

New book review for Amplifying Your Effectiveness: Collected Essays, edited by Gerald M. Weinberg, James Bach, and Naomi Karten, Dorset House Publishing, 2000, reposted here:

This book is a collection of "pre-cedings" written by 17 software consultants for a conference of the same name. In the introduction, Weinberg explains the frequent ineffectiveness of proceedings typically distributed at the end of conferences. These essays (the entire text is less than 150 pages) present a preview of the hosts participating in the first "Amplifying Your Effectiveness" conference by demonstrating the diverse styles and interests of the authors. Weinberg explains that within any organization, improvements in effectiveness can occur at three levels - the individual ("the Self"), the team ("the Other"), and the organization as a whole ("the Context") - and that this collection attempts to address all three levels. In addition, there are three fundamental abilities that contribute to the effectiveness of a manager or any other technical leader: "the ability to observe what's happening and to understand the significance of your observations", "the ability to act congruently in difficult interpersonal situations, even though you may be confused, or angry, or so afraid you want to run away and hide", and "the ability to understand complex situations so you can plan a project and then observe and act so as to keep the project going according to plan, or modify the plan". These three abilities are also addressed in this collection because the least developed among them prevents one from amplifying effectiveness the most.

The essays are presented in four parts: "empowering the individual", "improving interpersonal interactions", "mastering projects", and "changing the organization". Based on the number of dog ears following the reading of this book, this reviewer especially enjoyed parts one and four, and essays "Do I Want to Take this Crunch Project?" by Sharon Marsh Roberts and Ken Roberts, and "Modeling Organizational Change" by Esther Derby. In the first, Roberts and Roberts draw a distinction between "crunch projects" and "pseudo-crunch projects" and how to navigate the circumstances surrounding each type of project. While  Edward Yourdon's "Death March" (see my review) discusses crunch projects at length, the authors here simplify the definition of crunch project by explaining that these types of project exhibit two requirements or constraints: (1) "there are major negative consequences if the project's deadline is not met", and (2) "given the constraints of the project, the allocated resources (time, money, or people) are significantly smaller than those required to fulfill the needs of the sponsor and the customers". The ability to distinguish between the crunch project and pseudo-crunch project is important because commensurate recognition is awarded to those who complete crunch projects, but few will acknowledge efforts of the team toward a pseudo-crunch project. Not only do pseudo-crunch projects typically exhibit "pseudo-deadlines" where internal management picks a date, but there are no significant impacts on profits or external relationships if the date is missed, pseudo-crunch projects bring by their very nature personal loss and no balancing gain.

In "Modeling Organizational Change", Derby explains that when a problem exists in the way a work group functions, confronting that problem necessitates organizational change, and "by taking a critical look at your process and using some theories from organizational design, you can fix that problem - and improve your organization's ability to deliver high-quality results". Because even small systems are very complex, any action in this regard can affect more than one variable in the system, so understanding the interplay of these factors and identifying the manner in which one desires to guide the system in a particular direction are important when designing organizational change. The relatively simple examples that Derby provides to explain circular causation and corrective action are written well, and the example and accompanying diagrams that she walks through are effective in explaining her points. Other essays that this reviewer especially enjoyed were (3) "Solving Other People's Problems" by Don Gray, where the author explains "The Pause Principle", "The Pay Attention Principle", "The Partnership Principle", "The Passion Principle", and "The Person Principle", (4) "The Perils of Parallel Projects" by Johanna Rothman, where the author discusses context switching alongside a table from Weinberg's "Quality Software Management, Volume 1" that exhibits data on how much time is truly available to an individual splitting their time across multiple projects, and (6) "Life as a Software Architect" by Bob King, where the author offers a discussion of the software architect role that explains what helps him avoid what he calls the "technical trap" - three metrics called "The Visibility Ratio", "The Conflict Metric", and "The Anxiety Metric".

New Book Review: "Buy-In"

Recently posted book review for Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down, by John P. Kotter and Lorne A. Whitehead, Harvard Business Review Press, 2010, reposted here:

In their preface to this book, authors Kotter and Whitehead succinctly present the challenge of implementing good ideas. The amount of thought and education put into the creation of good ideas today often outweighs the knowledge and instruction on implementing those very ideas. For example, the field of strategy has made huge advances in the last twenty years, but the field of strategy implementation has made far less progress. It would be great if good ideas that one champions on and off the job could simply stand on their own, but unfortunately this is not the case far too often. The authors remind the reader that this book is not about persuasion, general communication skills, or all the methods one might use to create buy-in.

The single method presented here to build support for a good idea is rarely used (or at least used well) and does not necessitate extraordinary rhetorical skills or charisma. The ideas that the authors offer are partially based on observations of Lorne Whitehead over the years as an entrepreneur, executive, administrator, and professor at the University of British Columbia, as well as the continuous research being conducted by John Kotter at Harvard Business School and the body of knowledge on the topics of leadership and change that has been published in several of his past works. According to the authors, the method they present is counterintuitive because it shows respect for all and uses simple, clear responses that can turn attacks to one's advantage because it focuses on capturing attention and eventually building buy-in.

The first third of the book presents this method in the form of a story - a story that focuses on a small band of individuals comprising a citizen's advisory committee in defense of an idea before a crowd of seventy-five individuals over a span of a few hours time. The authors point out, however, that there are obviously many different settings in which this story could have taken place, and they believe that the method used to defend the idea is the best regardless of situation. The second part of the book provides an analysis of this story, and later provides twenty-four responses to twenty-four attacks that will not silence valid criticism but will stop the killing of good ideas by verbal bullets.

Kotter and Whitehead are careful to point out that many of these attacks might be innocently raised by individuals who are not explicitly trying to kill the objects of the attacks, but this does not mean that they are any easier to wrestle. In outlining their method following the case study story, this reviewer was especially influenced by the assertion that overcoming attacks with tons of data, or logic and more logic, should not be attempted, and that the opposite should be the goal. This reviewer could not help being reminded by the Seinfeld episode where character George Costanza is influenced by character Jerry Seinfeld when he said "If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right". Of course, the authors are not proposing that this blind philosophy should be followed, but it is probably closer than one might think.

The authors categorize the four types of attacks as confusion, fear mongering, death by delay, or ridicule and character assassination, and they indicate that it helps the idea generator to realize that attacks boil down to this small number because individuals often get bogged down by weighty lists that try to be comprehensive but end up being unmanageable. The twenty-four attacks and responses are grouped according to the implicit attitude of the attacker, which are essentially (1) the problem the idea generator is attempting to solve does not exist, so the idea is not needed, (2) the problem that is being presented admittedly exists, but the solution being proposed by the idea generator is not very good, and (3) the problem does indeed exist, and the solution that the idea generator proposes might actually be a good one, but it will not work in the case at hand. Well recommended text. The book is laid out well, focused, and lacks the tangents that so many texts seem to possess.

RSNA 2009: Single Source of Truth?

This is the second installment of my discussion following attendance at the RSNA 2009 trade show event at McCormick Place in downtown Chicago. The first installment discussed the faulty findings of one of the research exhibits, followed by my recommendations on how to properly construct the p-chart, a type of statistical quality control chart, provided as part of the exhibit.

Due to its footprint on the trade show floor, even a casual walk through the commercial exhibits would be sure to catch notice of the space occupied by Cerner Corporation, a global supplier of healthcare solutions. As a consultant enterprise architect, however, what immediately caught my attention was Cerner's slogan - apparently trademarked - which reads "Single Source of Truth".

Single Source of Truth? Trademarked? Wait - isn't this a common expression that has been used for years, especially by data architects? My attendance at RSNA 2009 followed shortly after the first of multiple stints at a healthcare insurance company, and I recall the client CIO describing what he needed as "Single Source of Truth". But in revisiting my discussions, I remember that he instead described his needs as "Single Version of the Truth", and later used this phrase interchangeably with "Single Source of Data".

Single Source of Truth. Single Version of the Truth. Single Source of Data. Do all of these phrases mean the same thing? Same difference, you say, right? Well, no, not exactly. I offer this discussion on these differences here because it is common to hear these terms used interchangeably.

"Single Source of Data" (SSOD) typically indicates that every data element is stored exactly once. In other words, every data element is stored in no more than a single row (record or tuple) of a single database table.

"Single Version of the Truth" (SVOT) typically indicates that multiple versions of the truth can exist within an organization. One of the purposes behind a data warehousing initiative is to resolve these versions of the truth and to provide an "official" version of truth to the organization. One common reason multiple versions of the truth can exist is because such data can reside in organizational silos. Bill Inmon, the "father of data warehousing", has eloquently described this concept in material he has written over the years.

"Single Source of Truth" (SSOT) is essentially synonymous with "Single Source of Data". However, once the term "truth" is referenced, it is usually the case that a data warehouse is involved, because while truth is assumed when a data element can only be found in one place, this assumption does not exist when a data element can be found in multiple places. The distinction that can be made between "Single Source of Truth" and "Single Version of the Truth" is that the former can involve linkages to data elements by reference in other locales. When such data elements are updated, propagation is initiated across the enterprise so that duplicate data elements are always updated, resulting in the same "truth" regardless of which element is subsequently read by processes.

Since Cerner Corporation trademarked "Single Source of Truth", it must be the case that no other company has adopted this slogan to identify its goods and services and distinguish them from competitors. Given the history of SSOD, SVOT, and SSOT, however, I find it odd that this trademark was granted. Regardless of whether you agree with the trademark, make sure you clarify what is meant by any expressions that you use so that opportunities for miscommunication are minimized.

HAPI Announcement: Version 1.0 Beta Released

As mentioned in a previous post, following several years of consulting in healthcare, I used HAPI (HL7 Application Programming Interface) for the first time a couple years ago as part of the solution I architected for a client network of hospitals. Since this initial adoption, the open source HL7 product continues to evolve, especially in recent months.

In November 2009, James Agnew communicated that a new beta of HAPI (1.0-beta1) had been uploaded with an accompanying annoouncement, and to spread the word on a recent development I provide the following received via email this evening in response to an inquiry as to when a stable version of HAPI 1.0 is expected to be released:

We had been planning on releasing it last week, so I was hoping to
reply to your email with a "ta-da!". :)

Unfortunately, a few last minute issues with the build script and a
last minute defect that our load tests uncovered have delayed it. That
said, all is looking good, so barring any further issues it should be
released within the next few days.

Cheers,
James