Masters in System Engineering

Recently I have been pondering whether to get a Master's degree and if so then which degree should I get.  Initially I thought I should get my degree in Information Systems or Computer Science.  I also thought about being the "big boss" in a company for which I may need a  Masters in Business Administration (MBA).
With IT being commoditized and being outsourced, I decided that I don't want to get a master's degree in Information Systems or Computer Science.   It's so Y2K mindset.   Instead I am strongly considering getting a master's in Systems Engineering.  I believe Systems Engineering will provide me the tools to excel in the future.  I don't see IT being the way it is now in ten to twenty years.  I could get two hundred or more certificates from Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, CISCO and worry about renewing my certs every few years or get a degree in Information Systems and morph into a nice comfy paper pushing employee.  Neither career appeals to me.  MBA sounds great but I don't want to spend $40,000 and more and end up being a mid level manager.  I will go for an MBA if the program is right.  Currently getting a MBA from non reputable college is not my view of career advancement.

So. I have decided to pursue a master's in Systems Engineering.  After getting some insight into couple of complex systems like the National Incident Management System (NIMS) or National Airspace System (NAS), I believe this would be a fascinating domain to study in and it will equip me to do my current job better.  Please feel free to comment and tell me how you feel about my decision.

Do I need a PMP next to my name

I believe job seekers hurt their chances when they start appending various professional acronyms to their name.  I saw this person on Linkedin  and looked at the acronyms following this person's name. I then analyzed it. This person has:

• MS - Master's of Science
• MBA - Master's in Business Administration
• CISSP - Certified Information Systems Security Professional
• PMP - Project Management Professional
• ITIL - Information Technology Infrastructure Library certifed
• MCSE - Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
• CCNP - Cisco Certified Network Professional
• Sec+ - I found this definition on Wikipedia Security+ is a certification dealing with computer security topics such as cryptography and access control, as well as business-related topics such as disaster recovery and risk management. 

I look at this person's profile and wonder the following things:

• Why does this person have a MS, MBA and multiple certifications?
• Does this person think that he/she needs to prove his/her technical skills?
• Is this person demand a high salary or consultant rate since he/she has numerous certificates?
• Why is this person so technical and have an MBA?  What is his/her career goals? 

I strongly believe this practice promotes recruiters to downgrade resumes or CVs which over use acronyms next to the candidates' names. I do believe that couple of acronyms next to the names may be helpful but why would a recruit consider someone who has a MBA or a PMP to be a Linux Kernel developer?

RDBMS got it right with SQL.

I recently purchased couple of books to learn how to write iPhone/iPad mobiles apps. I then viewed Objective-C on wikipedia to understand the nuances of the programming language.  It's doesn't look too bad.  It is geared more towards C++ which is not a bad approach.  The reason Apple uses Objective-C is because how Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, was involved with the company that invented Objective-C.  After spending numerous years working with Java, J2EE, ColdFusion, JavaScript, studying C++ in college and working with .Net, I feel that the paradigm of object oriented programming is fractured and it needs to be standardized.  Vendors like Oracle, Microsoft and Apple have come up with different compilers and different approaches on how engineers interface with the computer.

This has not be the case with relational databases where Structured Query Language (SQL) is a universal standard and it is quite straight forwards.  Vendors have taken liberty on how stored procedures, triggers and other things have been developed but the underlying SQL is a common standard.

The Object Oriented programming community should push for standardization of basic OO principles like a class, an interface, a public method, a private method, a static method, primitive data types.  By doing that design patterns can be implemented in a standard approach. For instance can anyone tell me how to develop code using Objective-C for the singleton design pattern.

UML will also be standardized an more granular.

FYI: Email Sucks! -enoch

Have you ever forwarded an email with the following message from you, "FYI..."?  This morning I talked to my colleague, Jonathan Beams, about our over reliance on email.  Imagine a world where employees didn't spend a significant amount of time typing emails. ... Ahhh...Doesn't that feel nice.

We could actually be more productive.  Unfortunately communications is such a big part of our day-to-day lives that folks cannot imagine a world without email. Jonathan stated this morning that the benefits of email are:

• Documented conversation for traceability and commitment
• A great way of sending documents
• and others

I still think it is a waste.  The CIO in the organization I work for gets around 1000 emails a day.  This is frankly ridiculous. Social media and information management are trying to address this problem but I think we should get rid of it.

Here is a challenge to Google, Micrsoft, IBM and others.  Give me an alternative to email.  I know social media, cloud computing and mobile computing are here to stay but I think it is time to call email legacy. 

Big data and the sampling approach

After my two hour commute from home, I stopped at Giant in Urbana, MD and bought flowers and chocolate for my wonderful wife.  During this process, I scanned my Giant card and go my rebate of couple of dollars.  While I was walking back to my car, I remembered one of the workshop I attended at last year's Gartner Symposium ITXPO.  The workshop was about visual analytics.  During the workshop I met an enterprise architect from a loyalty card company.  The company produces business intelligence by ingesting grocery stores chain's loyalty card data.  I then thought about the issue of big data.  This is hottest topics right now in the realm of information technology.

What is big data?  According to Wikipedia, "Big data are datasets that grow so large that they become awkward to work with using on-hand database management tools."  It is wonderful that we have technologies which can store large data sets and run complex algorithms on fast computers to produce views in the data sets.  This approach, however, differs the traditional statistical approach like sampling.  As a trained chemist, I was raised in the sampling approach.  The number experiments I did in physical and analytical chemistry labs which relied heavily on the sampling approach.

This leads to the next question.  Which way is better?  This depends on several factors.  For example:

• Data capturing methodology - If it is takes a few minutes to assess and capture data then sampling may be a way to go.  If all of the data points cannot be captured during the process then sampling approach may be the way to go.  For example the Census Bureau cannot do it's job if it took the big data approach to create its census.  It would take a long time and there is no guarantee that they would interview every single individual process.  The data points (people) are also changing by individuals dying and being born. 
• Scalability - The Big Data approach is not a scalable approach. Yeah, the big data store vendors like Oracle, SAP, Micrsoft and Google will try to sell you more computing but capturing all of the data points and running algorithms can be a cost and resource prohibitive.  I believe sampling is the way to go if you want to do a scale the model.
• Multiple views into a finite data set - If the data set is a finite number then I believe going the Big Data way is the right way since the computers will provide some unique views into the data. 

If anyone out there is working on both approaches then please comment on this entry.

Buddy it ain't dream computing. It's reality!

A few days ago, I had an interesting conversation with my co-worker Bill about modeling to a specific project or program or should we model with the enterprise in mind.  I then asked the question.  Does it make sense to model data, business processes, or an software modules like the federate query for the enterprise?  The answer is No!  This is because the enterprise is an ambiguous area.  Nothing is clearly defined however every business and every person recognizes that there is a bigger universe than their specific project and program.  IT personnel will throw everything in the enterprise bucket if it is ambiguous, idealist or flat out dreamy. Architecting for the enterprise without requirements, constraints, road maps or even goals is what I call dream computing.  It is only possible in dreams.    If you want to argue with me or just disagree, I suggest that you hit the pillow and just dream about your reality.  Frankly in my reality, everything is driven by financial figures and what makes business sense.

So getting back to the discussion with Bill, if your organization wants to push enterprise level thinking, modeling, design and development capabilities at the enterprise level then your organization should have a strategy.  You can then validate the strategy by picking an architectural framework which meets the organization requirements.  The strategy should also be defined by the organization requirements.  The organization requirements can captured as quarterly goals and have an  idea how they want to achieve the goals.

After you pick the framework then you need to decompose the framework to understand how you can use it to meet your organization's requirements.  For example Department of Homeland Security  (DHS), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and other US government agencies use the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF).  The FEAF was developed by Office of Management and Budget(OMB) and it meets their requirements.  Unfortunately agencies like the DHS and FAA use FEAF to do data calls and develop roadmaps (40K foot view is an understatement).  This however leads to major heart burn among the agency's management community see FEAF doesn't meet any of their requirements.  The management community subscribes to Gartner and Forrester and these publications which state that EA is better than sliced bread (okay I am overusing the"sliced bread" phrase).  The management community then wonders why is our EA team so horrible.  They pester us with data calls and develop academic road maps using FEAF and they have no value to the agency.  This blog can go back about talking about the importance of communications from a EA program however I have blogged about this issue enough for the last couple of years now.  I am now going to talk about the individual agencies failing to develop a EA program with their ability to capture oranizational requirements.   If your government agency's EA program is done well then the data calls to OMB  should be a cinch. Usually EA programs complain about that they don't have any sponsorship.  In highly bureaucratic organization where you have to pick your battles, would you give sponsorship to an OMB centric program.  I don't think so.  This is also because the organization in general has not done its due diligence in defining their strategy.  The government agencies wait for answers from the top and are extremely reactionary.

Back to Bill's conversation.  I told him that you cannot  do anything in the Enterprise without requirements.  You can model the enterprise to n-level granularity or the n-level sub processes.  In the end it is a wasted exercise because businesses are not going to pay how many rodents get stuck in a plane. If management is forcing you to go the enterprise level then identify the framework and work with the approach I proposed.
Where is my pillow again?  I need to dream about new blog entry ideas.

gCrack vs iCrack (Satire)

I don't know if you heard but Google and Apple are announcing couple of new products which are aimed specifically at the "partying" group.  Google's version is called gCrack and it will be in Beta release mode.  gCrack will only be given out by existing gCrack users.  The product is a graduate of Google Labs; and is manufactured in south america.  It is then distributed via its new partners in Mexico called gNarcos. According to the Google CEO, this is the best thing since sliced bread and Google is excited about it.  Other neat incentives with respect to gCrack are:

• Can be purchased using Google Shopping
• Track orders from south america to your door step via Google Earth
• Network with other fellow gCrack users on Orkut
• Talk to the farmers and manufacturers of gCrack using Google Mobile devices
• Two years free subscription of Google business apps

Meanwhile in Cupertino, CA, it is rumored that Apple has been working with its partners in developing iCrack.  It is a similiar product to gCrack.  Talking to unnamed sources within Apple, iCrack is far more expensive than gCrack since there is a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between iCrack users and Apple on the quality of iCrack.  Apple will back its iCrack product and guarantees that the users will be "high" when they use it.  Unlike gCrack, which does not guarantee the quality, iCrack is five times more expensive than gCrack.  Apple is also going to promise the following things with iCrack:

• Create and track orders on iTunes
• Purchase iCrack using Apple's exclusive iCrack app for its iPad and iPhone
• Meet the iCartel (iCrack manufacturers) on iCrack using FaceTime.  

Interpol is concerned about this development since they claim gCrack and iCrack is nothing more than crack cocaine.  According to the Republicans, these crack products will help the US economy and bring jobs.  The Democrats say that these type of policies will increase the need for standardized health care and pump money in Medicare.  It looks like gCrack and iCrack are here to stay.  The real winner will be Google and Apple shareholders. It should also be noted that both companies see the crack addict will be ultimately the real winner because it will bring prices downs and the quality up.  The next big question is what will Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle do?  Are they going to get into the crack cocaine business?