Mastering The Magnum Opus
Engineering Feats Starts From Engineering Finesse: (Hu)Man, Machine, Method
To fulfill an agenda, whether military or business, we need to lay out the definitive description as a complex systemic process that requires expertise in various spheres of technological facilities or services, which can be composable as functions. To build the facilities, the development process must be a carefully crafted integral part mapped to the architectural blueprint with a master blueprint plan of test validation, audit and assurance.
Quad Magnum Opus?
Your tools and facilities are the means to your mastery. Noel’s ark is not built overnight. It started with — tools and organization. To master the craft, one must first master the craftsman.
1/3 planning; 1/6 coding; 1/4 component test and early system test; 1/4 system test, all components in hand. - Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
40% design (including operational and contingency concerns), 30% coding / construction (and documenting), 20% functional testing (in parallel), 10% debugging, then move to the next stage of the stress and hostile testing before the stage of piloting. - Ursa, 2000A successful document from the architect tells the builders how to build the solution in a timely fashion, while in the view of the stakeholders, it assures them the validation of the reasons why it is structured in that manner to support their business. - 2012-02.27All possible definitions of probability fall short of the actual practice. - An Introduction to Probability Theory and its ApplicationsHow developed a system and organization is should be gauged in accordance to the speed and resolution of it's execution rather than how intricating the system looks. I am not interested in how it looks, show me how it works! - 2001-10.28, Re: organization, processes and proceduresA design that is an afterthought means that there is a moron before that design thinking. - 2013-11.22"""
What makes a sensible solution?
1. Securely
2. Surely (convenience/ sensible/ ease of use, reliable)
3. Sophisticated (gain market confidence and popularity for use)
4. Simple (low cost)
5. Significant (the attested delta of difference delivered)
- 2011-08.23
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The engineer must start early and evolve vigilantly to fail fast and forward. In system engineering, the mindset and methodologies reflect each other. This should also be set in parallel for both functional and contingency engineering, instead of an afterthought which will be translated to an unwieldy construction.
How does a project get to be a year late? . . . One day at a time. — Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.Day-by-day schedule slippage is harder to recognize, harder to prevent, and harder to make up than calamities. — Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.unvollendete : Incomplete art/ unfinished work
coup d'œil : A glance that takes in a comprehensive view
Principle Centered Engineering
[ Method ]
Hypothetical speculation from phenomenal observations can be clarified by scientific accumulation of practical facts and worked through by motivated iteration between theory and experimental practice.
In applying theories, engineers make mistakes all the time. The most fatal mistake is not to evolve forward from the mistakes they sustained. What should be waged is the strategic insights that will derive finesse and engineer feats.
Engineers cannot mitigate design flaws from implementation. Design should also caveat possible implementation faults. Contingencies should be part of the vigilance in mind from design.
O.A.S.I.S. is a disciplined paradigm of
1. (Observe and) Organize
2. Analysis
3. Synthesis
4. Investigate (and Trial)
5. SupersedeCrisis management forethought, as contingency engineering, should be stated in design. Post-mitigation only hides regrets. Fore-warned and Pre-armed are at design phase. Detect, React, Remediate, and Evolve are at deployment and operational phases.
6 sections to a complete scheme of crisis management: Fore-warned, Pre-armed, Detect, React, Remediate, and Evolve (预, 备, 探, 应, 治, 化).Design should proceed with vigilance. Addition or subtraction of different components creates a different outcome, but not a binary win/lose outcome like a multiplicative system. Multiplying by zero — A chain is as strong as its weakest link.
Never engineer passively. The more you test, the less you guess. Wargame your scenarios proactively, and evolve your methods relentlessly.
Plan your test, test your plan. — Ursa
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. - Brian KernighanThe only reasonable way to build an embedded system is to start integrating today. The biggest schedule killers are unknowns; only testing and running code and hardware will reveal the existence of these unknowns. Test and integration are no longer individual milestones; they are the very fabric of development. - Jack Ganssle, The Art of Designing Embedded SystemsProgram testing can be used to show the presence of bugs but never to show their absence. - Edsger W. Dijkstra discovers bugs, 1972Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. - Argumentum ad ignorantiam ( a.k.a. Appeal to Ignorance)What is hard to code, must be hard to debug. - M. Smolaquod erat demonstrandum: "which was to be demonstrated"
Top-Down Evolutionary Design, Bottom-Up Incremental Implementation
How does a product get built? Piece-by-piece, feature by feature. A full fledged solution is not growth overnight, it is evolved with dedication on a “every single day” basis, extracting the best of the essence. Transformative progress is also part of the engineering mastery. Tool your facilities and build an infrastructure around your facilities.
In Wing Chun (咏春), there is a concept known as 小念头 (Siu Nim Tao, little intentions). The form Siu Nim Tao was evolved over 100s of years, and even the principles are mined and extracted from other schools of development."""
1. Make tools early and small enough to be agile enough and feature-wise to evolve, adapted and assimilated into a larger mother ecosystem.2. Create tools as you see independent utilities, and observe the call for adaptations. Observe how people use them, and refine. The more the usage, the more the data and insights to create that evolution.
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Engineering methodology frame a set of methods. Some guard them as secret recipe, but once revealed, the wonder will continue to evolve forthwith.
Documentation of the methodology and progress is instrumental to engineering. You cannot track what you do not tag. You cannot reveal secrets that will be lost to the unwritten.
温故知新 (wēn gù zhī xīn) : mining old concepts to derive new paradigms.Caveat:
1. Do not learn a lesson twice.
2. Do not focus merely on tools to use and end up making Rube Goldberg machines that don’t do anything well.
3. Do not re-invent the wheel. Do not invent the `Talky stick`.
Divide et Impera and Pareto Principle
Infrastructure can be componentized for manageability. Diversification can be dilution, However, the Pareto principle relies on a strategic focus. To be able to grapple with the complexity, the parts are anatomized for analysis.
Pareto’s principle relates to several strategic principles in Wing Chun, such as the centre chasing principle. Essentially, it also address on focusing on solving the hardest things from the fundamental focus.Caveat:
1. Tunnel-vision. One needs the conduction of focused and diffused mind.
2. Break up and conquer may fail in some cases. When you cut up an elephant, you don’t get 2 elephants, you get a dead one.
Compounding
Compounding is related to Pareto principle. The more connections you make across different domains, the more Matthew’s effect can reinforce and take.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. — Sun TzuInterest eats night and day, and the more it eats the hungrier it grows. The farmer in debt, lying awake at night, can, if he listens, hear it gnaw. If he owes nothing, he can hear his corn grow. — Robert G. Ingersoll
Compounding can go both ways — progressive or regressive. Hence, engineering awareness must consider the state of work.
The Strategic Crux
In deep clarity, when continually adding features to the product, there is awareness of introducing flaws hidden within complexity. Keeping focus on key operational soundness and sustainability issues, the end-to-end examination extends to listening closely to users’ feedback.
The improvements are not merely push unto the users, but allowing the market or community pull and lead the development. This connotes the need to identify the critical steering forces and components.
The Strategic Insight
Einar Landre quotes Harry Hillaker, the lead designer of the F-16, saying that the original requirement for the aircraft was for it to reach the speeds of Mach 2-2.5. When Hillaker asked the U.S. Air Force why that was important, they responded that the jet had to “to be able to escape from combat.”Although Hillaker’s design never got above Mach 2, it allowed pilots to escape from combat with superior agility, not speed. The requirement implied many innovations, including a frameless bubble canopy for better visibility, a reclined seat to reduce the effect of g-forces on the pilot, a display that projects combat information in front of the pilot without obstructing his view, and side-mounted control sticks to improve maneuverability at high speed. These features resulted in the F-16 being superior to alternative designs and less expensive to produce.The F-16 was successful because the design provided a better and cheaper solution than what the customer asked for. The original requirements, including the demand for Mach 2.5 speed, formed one possible solution to a problem, yet the problem wasn't strategically specified. Instead of implementing the requirements, the designers sought a deeper understanding of the problem. Once they had it, they could lock-on to the crux and derive their design from those, rather than from suggested solutions or arbitrary expectations about functionality."""
If you get the leitmotiv, the rest are details. - 2012-02.27Design decisions is the first step to derive attributes used to delineate the features. - 2012- 02.27An action plan gets you from 1 task stage to the next, it is only a validation part, but to achieve your ultimate goal, you must not lose sight of the target. - 2012-03.02Expanding on a solution that is untenable and complex is growing chaos. It will eventually seed disaster. - 2014-08.06Engineering should be as simple as Legos, but mysterious enough to be a religion. - 2016-05.04Ambiguity is the antithesis to reliability and security for our engineering service with fair assurance. - 2021-01.04
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The strategic insight relies on working paradigms. If the organization depends on human experience, it is likely the methodology lacks a discipline. There are many standard models, and it is an art to frame a means to have one to rule them all. Engineering taxonomy can produce strategic principles, paradigms, and working standard model, and few may even attempt to derive a unified theory.
All assumptions are wrong, including this one. - George Edward Pelham Box FRS (18 October 1919 – 28 March 2013), Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1976All models are flawed, but some are useful.- George Edward Pelham Box FRS (18 October 1919 – 28 March 2013), Empirical Model Building and Response Surfaces (1987), p. 424
Create a super-prototype encompassing and supporting all features and derive derivative products for market segmentation. The super-prototype demonstrates technological might and with proper design principles, sub-blocks can be reconstructed for the derivatives. The evolutionary super-prototype (amending and emending the sub-block functions/ modules) and it’s re-usable modules should be the cynosuric reference design.
Curse of Complexity
Divide et Impera will expose the curse of complexity that hides the loose joints. These are the weakness that will cause glitching during anomalies, engendering exceptions which can lead to disasters. This will lead to a design of contingencies such as Failover from Single point of failure (SPOF).
I came up with a solution called "plus 1, minus 3": if you want to add a rule, you must subtract the previous three rules. This way, our document got shorter and shorter. If you don’t reduce the number of rules, then your rules and regulations will get thicker and thicker, which forces everyone to break a rule, to make a mistake, and we all get confused and muddled headed.
- Jack Ma, Bund Finance Summit SpeechCaveat:
1. Taking the easiest way out of a problem usually leads back in.
Situation, Systems, Solutions
Over engineering is a way to buffer for Blind-spots and Black-swans. Redundant and decentralized processing can mitigate systematic flaws, but it may not fend against the lack of situational response and management. Empirical test hunt for those unknowns is still to be mandated. There is no testing too costly than lives to be paid for post-mortem regrets. No lessons should be learned by with experiencing them — too late and too bitter.
There are 2 ways of constructing a software design: 1 way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. — C.A.R. Hoare, Turing Award LaureateGeology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really... pressure... and time... That, and big goddamn poster.
- The Shawshank Redemption, Movie, 1994The security and safety of the system reflect the vigilance of the designer.
- Ursa, 2000The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
Many problems we see today in every aspect is because there were a few people back then parroting "it is still in its early days" and conveniently stop thinking well enough about them, and when things are set in and frozen as technical debt, they committed the second sin - “live with it”. """
We do not want to roll out a ghost ship that is going to be lost at sea, fixing in the middle of the storm out at seas, or end up at the bottom of the ocean. - Ursa
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Evolution
Lean, spare, fast programs are almost always the result of strategic breakthrough, rather than tactical cleverness. Often such a breakthrough will be a new algorithm. More often, the breakthrough will come from redoing the representation of the data or tables. Representation is the essence of programming.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.Beyond craftsmanship lies invention, and it is here that lean, spare, fast programs are born. Almost always these are the result of strategic breakthrough rather than tactical cleverness. Sometimes the strategic breakthrough will be a new algorithm, such as the Cooley-Tukey Fast Fourier Transform or the substitution of an n log n sort for an n* set of comparisons.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
[ Machine ]
Machines are the executive expression and manifestation of methods. They are either the final target product or the means to the product. When the methods in the design takes a life of its own, the implementation to its realization of the promised functions depends on its craftsmanship.
There was the Garden, and then the Eden.All machines must have installation of defensive and adaptive countermeasures. There should be In-built-detection and Built-In Self-Test (BIST) as part of Engineering Fail-proof. The Built-in Detector of Safety represents the margin of safety designed and built in.
兵者，国之大事，死生之地，存亡之道，不可不察也,不可不慎也. - 孙子兵法, 第1章
The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence, it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. - Sun Tzu, Art of War, Chapter 1Trust, but verify (Доверяй, но проверяй) — Vladimir Ilyich LeninThings that are perfectly reasonable in war time, you never allow in peacetime. Many defensive techniques that make sense in war do not make sense in peace. So which metaphor you use frames the debate. - Bruce SchneierWeapons don't come with a return address. - Bruce SchneierYou either rule your own system or you get ruined under someone else’s. - Ursa
We should be aware that our solutions could be limited by the tools (or our preference for the tools) and / or our own mentality that is instrumenting it.
Architects cannot learn to design grand cathedrals if they are taught all their drawing courses using only an Etch-a-Sketch because the company struck a deal with the university ... — about Windows supplanting other operating systems in Universities"Many environments don't have a well-defined perimeter - they're like Klein bottles: everything is both inside and outside." - to organizers of a workshop on insider misuse
Whether it be a machine or a method, never use black-boxes blindly or blindly create black-boxes. Work with grit and diligent to understand the art, philosophy, science, logic and mathematics under the hood.
一样画葫芦 (yī yàng huà hú lu) : draw a gourd by imitation. Illustrating the mentality to do something without understanding.“…you have thrown a pebble into the pond and the ripples are going to go much further than you could possibly ever tell.”
— Information Security magazine from 1999
Do not jump straight into cutting down the wrong forest with blunt axes. Tend to the soundness of rationales of “doing the right things” (the `why`), and “doing the things right” (the `how`). Once you get them, next work on your tools, and tool an infrastructural ecosystem. The ancient Egyptians terraformed by creating rivers and factories to ship and craft their equipment and materials.
Study physics and understand the applications of mechanics and dynamics. Be deeply curious and observe mechanisms from everywhere and from everyday utilities. Levers exists everywhere — in scissors, wheelbarrows, crowbars, pliers and even our jawbones. The concept of leverage applies a smaller, focused changes to generate make larger resultant force. Study the intricate design of joints, their limitations, and how martial artists innovate to overcome them, e.g. the `kungfu whip punch`. Reflect and relate it to everything, even in philosophical applications. Think relentlessly to refine upon the designs. Journalize your life’s work like Da Vinci.
It is because of the advent of glass that human began to see and measure the world around them differently.Let methods be expressed as and innovated into machines of all forms, devise terraforming infrastructural ecosystem as part of your machinery to create engineering feats.
Sensing and Decision
How the system is operating depends on its wellness in operating decisions. This pertains to sanity and security of rigor and robust systems. Understand the nature of operational decisions to make, and identify the instruments by which the system is measuring with, i.e. via its sensors and data collecting mechanisms or facilities. Control the ascendancy and order of expectations. The priorities of the metrics must be well-formed, well-ordered, and well-obtained. Hence, the wellness are in terms of accuracy (verifiability and validity) and sufficiency. Care in defenses to deter false metrics to override the ones that are attested in ascendancy or order during the decision making process.
[ (Hu)Man ]
Special forces worked under extreme situations. Each specialist of the team has specialties acquired from years of astringent programs with little allowance and tolerance of mistakes. Their lives depend on their surgical coordination and trust. Every mission they survived stands as a testimony to their military deadliness. The same as with surgical staff at the operating theatres.
The lessons drawn from their strategic field planning, intelligence surveillance, and tactical surgical striking, are precious methods that any organization should strive for. The science and art of organization and operations is the field of study of any leader as well as their members to attain the state and stage of an accomplished, formidable team. If any team wants to be force to be reckoned with, there are no shortcuts.
Take care of the (Hu)Man, and they will take care of your Machine and Method. - Ursa, 2000If you know the virtue and vice of craftsmen, you will know the finesse and flaws of their crafts. - Ursa, 2000
The very essence of computing security lies in the human factor, it determines and governs all other domains. While philosophically, systems are to govern the human or the human to rule the system depends largely on trust and trustworthiness of the human quality. The human is gauged on 4 basic factors : Courage, Integrity, Ability and Benevolence (or generally to address — the goodness of being). The other view addresses if the human is made or conditioned for the machine or the machine is designed to serve the human, while it seems apparently obvious, this is not so, as many organizations have designated workers to fit the system to gain an final corporate goal. In the first intent, the human is institutionalized and trained to operate the machines as part of the security facility; while the latter, machine assists and enhances the human vigilance.
The mastery of the team orchestration depends on their communication, trust-building, conduction of shared `flow`, and co-vigilance. The emergence will be a culture and ethos of synergy and symbiosis.
When the battle of Red Cliff was fought, I believe Cao Cao’s act of connecting all the ships together was the first instance of an aircraft carrier, in China and the world, but after a fire burned it all down, for a thousand years, the Chinese people didn't dare to think about it again. Once they thought about that fire, who still wanted to make a bigger ship, who could still have this kind of system-level thinking? - Jack Ma, Bund Finance Summit SpeechGood innovation is not afraid of regulation, but is afraid of being subjected to yesterday's way to regulate. We cannot use the way to manage a railway station to manage an airport. We cannot use yesterday's way to manage the future. - Jack Ma, Bund Finance Summit Speechhamartia: Fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine.
Q, The Human Factor
Understand that project volatility will be translated to system fragility. Similarly, human confusion will be expressed into system complexity. The human coordination and quality must be part of the engineering or it will become the source of engineering defects.
The measurement of “social intimacy”, QBen Jones, a professor of management at the Kellogg Business School, observed a sharp shift toward scientific teamwork in relation to “scientific production”. While the most cited studies in a field used to be the product of lone geniuses, the best research emerges from groups. Whether particle physics or human genetics, science papers produced by multiple authors are cited more than 2x as often as those by individuals. This trend was even more apparent when it came to publications with at least a 1000 citations — which were more than 6x as likely to come from a team of scientists.By analyzing 19.9 million peer-reviewed papers and 2.1 million patents from the last 50 years, Jones was able to show that more than 99% of scientific subfields have experienced increased levels of teamwork, with the size of the average team increasing by about 20% per decade. The reason is simple: the biggest problems we need to solve now require the expertise of people from different backgrounds who bridge the gaps between disciplines. Unless we learn to share our ideas with others, we will be stuck with a world of seemingly impossible problems. We can either work together or fail alone.What’s the ideal strategy for group synergetic creativity? Brian Uzzi, a sociologist at Northwestern, looked for the answer by studying Broadway musicals. The 1st thing Uzzi discovered was that the people who worked on Broadway were part of an interconnected social network - it didn’t take many links to get from the librettist of Guys and Dolls to the choreographer of Cats. Uzzi came up with a way to measure the density of these connections, to reflect the “social intimacy” of people for each musical. He called it, Q. Higher levels of Q signal a greater degree of closeness. For instance, a musical developed by a team of artists who had worked together several times before, that musical would have a high Q. In contrast, a musical created by a team of strangers would have a low Q.From the data, the numbers tell the story through the correlation between levels of Q and the success of the musical. When the Q was low (< 1.7), the musicals were more likely to fail. Because the artists didn’t know 1 another, they struggled to work together and to exchange ideas. Uzzi said that we can’t just put a group of people who have never met before in a room and expect them to make something great. It takes time to develop a successful collaboration. However, when Q was too high (> 3.2), the work also suffered. The artists were so close that they crushed theatrical innovation with herd thinking. This is happened on Broadway during the 1920s. Although the decade produced many talented artists, it was riddled with theatrical failures. (Uzzi’s data revealed that 87% of musicals produced during the decade were utter flops, which is far above the historical norm). The problem is that all of these high-profile artists fell into the habit of collaborating with only their friends.Uzzi’s data demonstrates that the best Broadway shows were produced with intermediate levels of social intimacy. A musical produced at the ideal level of Q (2.6) was 2.5x more likely to be a commercial success than a musical produced with a low Q (<1.4) or a high Q (>3.2). It was also 3x more likely to be lauded by the critics. This led Uzzi to argue that creative collaborations have a sweet spot: The best Broadway teams were those with a mix of relationships. These teams had some old friends and newbies. Artists could interact efficiently on a familiar structure to incorporate some new ideas.
All solutions are never by itself, it is technology expressed to solve sociological ends. Hence, most solutions are both technology and operations.
“Most organizations are like Ukranian dolls — each inside has another inside.”
— In email to organizers of a workshop on insider misuse
Collective Intelligence
Concepts expand and refine over time, and human cognition should too. The level of awareness should be the compounded resultant of people around us. Organization is also an evolving entity seeking the game of optimality. As a system it adapts to derive working principles that forms its grounds of moral rationale. The moral governance is motivated on the outcome of morale which sets the Zeitgeist. Hence, it is the energetic engine of the macro-organism. This dictates the harvest and sharing of the harvest.
Understand well that the level of civilization is proportionally equal to the emergence of collective elements’ lives. Managing working factors that determine the destiny of civilization and of its subjects becomes the sociological arrangement.
The mode of sovereignty is decided on the modus operandi that captures the highest yield for the group, or so perceived on the gains, relative to the resources that is vested. The confidence of that promise brings people together on that shared pursuit.
Operational protocol is set to communicate to assure certainty, so that each member understands the motive and motivation for the work focus to co-create that orchestrated effect. Hence, they have to set and drill ways to communicate efficiently to remain operational deft. The result is rigorous regime and regiment. This is seen in mission critical elite teams with mastery over skills and equipment.
The most astute organization is resilient and robust. Each working unit is adaptive and autonomously self-directed. The ability to capture the vantage points and secure advantageous factors and conditions is evident. Their delivery of outcomes in every engagement is militarily surgical.
The mightiest organization is well bonded and well provided for with consistency in governance for relentless mutual empowerment. Therefore, provide for and facilitate people to play out their experiments, create a means and channel for the feedback for their growth of themselves and their solutions from the nascent piloting to real-field deployment.
Lightly nurture their compulsion towards obsession. Incite them, and let them find their own excitement. Inspire them, and let them form their aspirations. Induce an ethos, and let them conduce and conduct their modus operandi. Help them forge their will to act, and they will give you their willingness. - UrsaWork is a means for your own self-expression, discovery, refinement and evolution. It should also be your silent loud protest, pushing against the norm. - UrsaThere are 3 types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened. - Mary Kay Ash (May 12, 1918 – November 22, 2001)
Tool to facilitate the habituation and let them form their own regime. Give people the sense to see and feel — their significance. They will cultivate their own dedication to engineer synergy within the synthetic evolution.
Know Thy Users
Many incidents are actually accidents caused by users themselves. They are not caused by motivated, hostile abusers or duplicitous misusers, but under-informed or misinformed misusers.
Many systems do not keep that rigor in the design to guide and protect their own users. Just as complexity, confusion is a curse to both the developers and the users.
It is almost a cliché that every winning technology is at least to be a pain remover if not a joy bringer. As architects and business solution strategists, this is an axiom to keep in mind. Though it is observed that the users and their tools influence each other, we cannot condition them by merely trying to convince them that the change is inevitable, and comfort the promise that the pain in the transition can be made painless. Relieving or sparing the pain experienced by the users, and delivering that facilitating pleasure to make that operational difference is the core of the design, and overtly, should be made part of the design. The users’ environment, ecosystem and situation must be considered. Their economics and ergonomics of things must be part of the equation and testing.
...you buy a car, and say that you don't care if it is made of cardboard or has any brakes, so long as it is cheap... - keynote talk at ISOC's NDSS 2000, in discussing software reliabilityThose of us in security are very much like heart doctors -- cardiologists. Our patients know that lack of exercise, too much dietary fat, and smoking are all bad for them. But they will continue to smoke, and eat fried foods, and practice being couch potatoes until they have their infarction. Then they want a magic pill to make them better all at once, without the effort. And by the way, they claim loudly that their condition really isn't their fault -- it was genetics, or the tobacco companies, or McDonalds that was to blame. And they blame us for not taking better care of them. Does this sound familiar? - Rajeev Gopalakrishna, acceptance speech for the NCSSA award at the 23rd NISSC in 2000
This is why piloting should always be part of the milestones before a scaled-up and wide-scale launch. The solution needs to be observed and attested systematically and operationally. Fundamentally, all technologies are to express and fulfill for a targeted experience of sociological phenomenon. Hence, whether the design meets the desired, and if there are unintended consequences or repercussions remain to be continuously in vigilant attestation, even when the solution is augmented or scaled up in deployment.
Build yourself (faculties)
Build your principles (foundation)
Build your methods (functions)
Build your strategy (focus)
Build your process (flow)
Build your tools (facilities)
Build your prototypes (features)
Build your people (family)
Build your team (formation)
Build your product (form)Altius, citius, fortius. — “Higher, Faster, Stronger” (Latin), motto of the modern Olympic games
Vantage Point and Moving Forward
Recognize that all human solutions are sociological, cultural, economic, financial and psychological questions backed by technological facilities.
Address these domains* before the tools.
* technological, scientific (including for human services like applied biomedical, safety, security, etc), historical, geographical, political, educational, economical, financial, cultural, etc.Expand from stable grounds (existing ‘neighborhood’, i.e. strategic position and posture in the business environment or ecology).
Provide by addressing and filling in the gaps e.g. put traceability mechanisms (especially for dispute resolutions and deter under-addressed domains where data is lacking or incomplete). It may not be feasible to address everything by oneself. Partner with vendors to create bundled business to ensure the coverage of the gaps, especially in user experiences.
Calibrate and cater. Build governance and controls within segmented use cases (or “activity zones”, e.g. ‘trade zones’). There is no one size fits all. Let users choose their sizing.
With segmented use cases, consumers can transfer between accounts (not just applications. This would be mapped to identity key chains) between network zones that have different controls and grades / trade-offs of anonymity and safety (anti-fraud, anti-criminal, etc) assurance. This also pertains to privacy versus safety.Have a strategy to Divide-et-Impera on mid size control to X-border international trade control.
User experience focus to gain adoption. Use that confidence and familiarity to earn trust to move towards the solutions demonstrating the delivery of tailored solutions to meet needs to ensure meeting universal or non-exclusive, effective demand — not pushing Ivory Tower solutions onto users based on self-trapping `fake-feel-good` delusions or tailoring to a parochial strata of people.
Construct a MVP with shared benefits as the common denominator, and gradually roll out other aspects designed and in-built in the architecture.
Whole this piece pertains to any Opus you may dedicate to. It came from my reflection of a life’s journey in the pursuit of engineering.
Engineering is about imitating nature to enhance the human society. It is any arduous attempt to bridge a the gap from point A to point B with a straight line, where point A is the present situation and point B is the desired outcome.
At a very young age I developed a keen interest in engineering and I have spent much of my time since then pursuing this passion. It is not merely a job or career to me, it’s a lifetime commitment, an abiding passion and calling. I am always relentlessly eager in making things faster, stronger, and more resilient to any form of possible engineering failure, albeit I have long understood that engineers are to practically accept certain possibilities and degree of engineering error.
Engineering must come with anticipation of certain degree and possibility of error. - 1997Engineering is beautiful. - 2000-02.27
As a young engineering student, I was temerarious and had debated with several of my teachers (e.g. with Professor Er M.J., 1997, 2000 and with Professor A.Kot … who called me a dreamer, when requesting for advisory for Masters Program in 2001). It did take me a windy route later.
It’s not just about engineering machines, it’s about engineering mankind … engineering lives. Without the spirit of engineering, all engineering remains lame, all machines remain cold dead. The work of an engineer contains the spirit of his being, it is a reflection of his soul. I promise you if you blow a breath upon your creative works, they will come alive! - 1997, 2000, 2001Professionalism is a bounded engineering problem of man and his machines, life and his living, tools and his techniques, emotions and his logic; and to me, Engineering is not merely a job or a career; it is in fact a life-time commitment. It is my way of seeking oneness with life, to decrypt the lore of Nature. Engineering is a way to imitate nature and harness it’s laws to reform human lives. It has tales to tell for those who care to lend their ears. It is unimaginable how enthralling the beauty of engineering can be. One would truly dedicate his life into romancing the wonders of it. My mind has affirmed it’s conviction, it shall contemplate on it’s course of life. My heart seeks to leap the immense joy of discovering the mysteries of such remarkable creation and revel it’s enriching wonderous works.
The spirit of Engineering is rarely preached nor practiced. Vitally. machines will remain machines without that breath of spirit that man may blow onto it to give it life.
The methodologies of engineering are indeed precision tools for shaping human thoughts. It is in fact a way of life. - 2002-08.29Life is like an AI program, it is fuzzy, yet wrong modeling, flimsy mathematical formulation or failure to consider situational possibilities results in engineering faults. - 2002-11.14The future is not to be afraid of, it is to be engineered. - 2002-08.10
The Architect
Hu(Man)
1. Mastering The Magnum Opus
2. The Art of Organization, Orchestration and Orientation
3. Operational Zen — Look Here, Focus And Improve Together
4. Robust Operational Readiness
5. Know Thy Adversity, Know Thy Adversary
6. Managing and Controlling Chaos
7. The Crisis Strategist: Controlling Chaos
8. The Strategist’s Grimoire — The OASIS FrameworkMachines And Methods
1. Engineering Clarity
2. Tooling With Engineering Clarity
3. The Untold Tragedy Of Unwritten Secrets: Documenting Insights
4. The Lore Of Hijacking Systems
5. Cryptographic Defenses