Best Laid Plans are not Guarantees

     I found this article about collective intelligence and planning which illustrates an example from NASA’s mission control of the International Space Station, by a so-called ADCO (Attitude Determination and Control) controller group. Among the planning items, it included the planning for Mars Rover scientific activity and scheduling activities in a bed rest facility (McCurdy, M. et al, 2009). According to the authors of this article, planning is often a collective intelligence activity especially needed for complex sociotechnology systems (Billman, D. and Feary, M., n.d.). The concept of three temporal profiles for planning is introduced. They are future-focused profile, present-focused profile and past-focused profile. For complex sociotechnology planning, explicit collaboration in the execution of plan activities must have all the actors within the plan to be tightly coupled. The challenge is distributing the plan to different groups of people who needs different pieces of information and the process can be error prone and difficult to keep up-to-date. If the problems are deemed to be part of collective intelligence, it warrants a deeper thinking about the larger organization context. McCurdy, M. et al (2009) argued that many planning approaches supporting collective intelligence “…do not support execution of highly contingent actions, distributed across many players and hence provide incomplete support for planning…”.

     In the case of the Mars Rover scientific activity and schedule planning by ADCO, many parties were involved and it was a typically complex sociotechnical planning. The plan was good and tight. Failure scenarios and possible problematic situations were well thought out and solutions were provided to deal with each of them. Nevertheless in 2010, something went wrong and it was found to be a programming problem. It was an obscure one at that but it was not caught by all the testing that was done to the software repeatedly before its operation. 

     With this in mind and thinking back to my sociotechnical plans made for my fictional company Mimi Enterprise in the last individual project, if similar problems occurred, the impact may not totally destroy all the planning but will have considerable negative effect on its success.

     My sociotechnical planning was about Cloud Computing, Telecommuting and Watson-type expert system/machine. Let’s assume that the policy of Telecommuting applies to most of the employees whose role can accommodate working from home and still be productive. This was carefully investigated to be advantageous to the company and the collective intelligence seems to be in-sync with the findings. After six months, the evaluation of this program tells a story of failure. The element that is out of the control of the planners’ hands is the morale of the telecommuting employees. It turned out that those employees felt isolated and got a sense of loss of cohesiveness that they enjoy when they all come to the office. The relevancy of this outcome to sociotechnical planning is yet another example of how things can go wrong especially in complex environments where lots of parties are involved. Work morale is generally measured on a group level if not all employees. If only one person has low work morale, it is a far simpler picture and often times, no action is required to deal with it.

     The two main forces that may affect my idea of getting into Cloud Computing, allowing Telecommuting for employees and the building of this Watson-type expert system/machine are company’s bottom line and the opinion of the board members. The three items planned can only be carried out if the company can afford to do so and have the approval of the board members. Absence of either one will not indicate a green light to proceed.

I have no access to the recommended “Best Laid Plan” book. I referenced this article by Billman, D. and Feery, M. (n.d.) titled Collective Intelligence and Three Aspects of Planning in Organizations: A NSAS Example and think that it is quite an appropriate piece of material to read for this topic.

References

Billman, D. and Feary, M. (n.d.). Collective Intelligence and Three Aspects of Planning in Organizations: A NASA Example. Retrieved from https://www.parc.com/content/events/attachments/Billman-CIplanningTemporal.pdf.

McCurdy, M., et al (2009). 
Space
Human
Factors
Engineering
Report:
Crew
Scheduling
Lessons
Learned.
NASA
Ames
internal
report.

Future Predictions

It is not difficult to find many interesting technology predictions in the Internet but to think big and farther down the timeline, I particularly like this FutureTimeline.net website which presents three periods of time, two on a per century basis and the last period is termed “The Far Future”. Instead of getting into specific technology predictions in the next decade or so, I am drawn to this much bigger yardstick and the predictions made are short, succinct and quite sensible to me.

The first period is the 21^st century from the year 2000 to 2099 which we are in the middle of experiencing. The prediction is not unexpected. It is about humanity on a global basis having to face and deal with climate change at an increasing pace and intensity. Overpopulation and resources become scarcer but on top of a world that has transforming new technologies exploding rapidly on a regular basis.

The second period is the 22^nd century from the year 2100 to 2199.The prediction is that transhumans emerging and diverging from humans in eco-technic societies global wide. Moreover, colonisation of space begins in earnest. Both predictions are fascinating and in my mind not at all far-fetched. We do not see humanoid Robots around us today but Robots are everywhere especially in the manufacturing sectors. Humanlike Robots are starting to function in more sophisticated ways both mechanically and intelligently. In addition to Artificial Intelligence, we have machine-learning, neural networking, cloud technology, virtualization, parallel computing, quantum computing on the verge of becoming a reality, nanotechnology and so much more. Because of the Internet, each generation starting from mine will become more educated, innovative and be able to acquire knowledge remotely and instantly. We are fulfilling this prediction right now. To have a far future, human must not be overcome by the impact of climate change such as wars induced by shortage of water, Religious and ideology wars could decimate us first before the water shortage. 

Finally the third period ‘The Far Future’ ranges from the year 2200 to 10,000 AD. Post-biological humanity spread throughout the galaxy and converting unlivable worlds into computational substrates. We can grow human organs and install mechanical devices inside the body today. I can imagine in the far future without a doubt that humanity will not have to rely on the fragile body that we have to survive. We may be able to live much longer but not escaping death.

 Above picture shows the window from inside a spaceship where humans can look out when traveling to space.

Reference

FutureTime.net – Timeline. Retrieved from  http://www.futuretimeline.net/index.htm.

A Case Study on the Failure to do Proper Scenario Planning

This is about a train company in London that had to drastically reduce service due to the shortage of drivers. It was a practice of this company to rely on its full time drivers to work overtime to cover the schedules but fewer and fewer of its drivers are willing to do so. It takes a year to bring up a professional driver. Unless the company is willing to increase the overtime pay, there is no short term solution. The problem is that the company cannot afford to offer this increase. Case in point is that the company did not assume a worst case scenario or miscalculated the degree of worseness and complexity that it could become. The world changes continuously. If we try to predict the future based on previous happens and not understanding all the relevant impacting factors and changing elements that could create whole new scenarios, the prediction is not much different than guesswork (Kourdi, J., 2013). 

            Using the past as guide to the future had caught out numerous big companies such as General Motors, Woolworths, Kodak, Daewoo and many others. Not be on the lookout of the changing world around you and see no reason to change when in good times, the downfall silently lands on the business gradually and without fanfare. By the time it is recognized, it will be too late to turn around. Scenario planning is like a strategic conversation. It is not linear in nature. The planning is a continuous process. Looking and preparing for change is a constant. Jeremy Kourdi (2013) suggested that hiring an external company to do the scenario planning will avoid disruption to the business or cause tensions among the staff who may have agendas of their own. The goal is to challenge the conventional ideas and create new ones based on the changing circumstances and environment around you. Identify possible outcomes, the probability of each happening and the impact on the company. Think of ways to deal with each of them. It is not about prediction but to understand the future with all its complexities; what it takes to shape the future that is profitable to the company and how to get there as well as what are the internal and external forces that will support planning and innovation for change.

            Case in point with the train company is that no one asked questions that would imply an answer such as I wish I had thought about these three years ago. When decision-makers of the company do not challenge the business-as-usual thinking and continuously engage in business and operational strategy debates, inertia occurs and the industry and the world will leave you behind. Scenario planning promotes the idea of learning from the past and preparing for the future. Forces involved in making this happen include steady awareness of the political, economic, societal and environmental changes and their relationships to the business. Analysis on any impact that they may cause should be taken into consideration with the full picture and use scenario planning as a tool to make an educated assessment and how best to deal with the potential negative outcomes before it occurs if possible. Avoid procrastination in dealing with less than profitable scenarios that are foreseen to come down the road. 

            A general technical challenge in defining the scope of the scenarios to be included in the planning cycles is instead of being passive observers; the opportunity to shape the future scenarios should not be missed. In the divergent-thinking phase of the planning process, the planners need to have open minded acceptance of each other’s insights and try to converge at a reasonable juncture. It is good practice to identify as many scenarios as possible and later on dismiss some that have a less chance of materializing. Draw the big picture to begin with all the divergent thinking ideas and find the most likely ones to target the planning on (Davis, P. et al, 2007).

 .

Figure 1: Divergent-thinking phase of strategic planning

References

Kourdi, J., (Nov 2013). Scenario Thinking. Entendeo. Retrieved from

            http://www.entendeo.com/scenario_thinking_.php.

Davis, P. et al (2007). Enhancing Strategic Planning with Massive Scenario Generation – Theory

and Experiments. By RAND National Security Research Division. Retrieved from http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2007/RAND_TR392.pdf

One Technology, one Key Trend for Higher Education

One Technology, one Key Trend for Higher Education

 

In the Horizon Report for 2015 Higher Education Edition prepared and published by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, an EDUCAUSE Program, several key trends in making use of the ever growing technology in higher education was identified, the main challenges that impede the adoption of this technology and the important developments in educational tools using technology to the advantage of higher education. In today’s blog, let us focus our discussion on one key trend and one technology. The selected pair is closely related to each other. This one key trend that I personally perceive to be more important than the others is a mid-term trend and the estimated adoption time is between three to five years. This trend is titled the Growing Focus on Measuring Learning. We needed a special word to count the almost uncountable numbers due to its hugeness such as googolplex. There is googolplex of data being gathered at a shorter and shorter amount of time. 

We have big data analytics for all sorts of pattern recognition, predictive analysis and a whole host of creative use cases for this data. Growing Focus on Measuring Learning is about collecting and using data from various sources that are relevant to education. That includes data on individual students. This data is then used to tailor a learning plan for each student based on the way they learn, their level of understanding, their pace in learning and the best teaching method to use that will help them succeed. This is using data to drive learning, teaching and performance assessment on a much finer granularity. There are verifiable numbers from data analysis. There are patterns in the data revealing hidden statistics that could be very useful as feedbacks for designing and providing effective learning programs. As we gather more and more useful data and know how to process them to our advantage, this data reflecting the real-world conditions tells us stories about our teaching methods, success/failure rate, individual student’s interaction with peers, school, friends and family members, the way they deal with homework, stress and teachers; who are the at risk students and how they perform based on their learning plan, etc. 

This data-driven measuring learning trend will make use of the adaptive learning technologies that are being developed and have a time-to-adoption of four to five years. Adaptive learning technologies are educational tools to help students adapt to tailored individual learning plans designed according to their performance and inclination to learn. These tools learn how students learn and use the data to adjust the content and resources needed at any given point in time to help the student make progress. It is like personal tutors to students helping where they need extra help and the instructional materials are adjusted to pack the most impact on their success. 

The trend of designing teaching methods and dispensing educational materials based on the data gotten from measuring how students learn and the adaptive learning tools to help students make progress is practiced in the online learning community with purposeful software and becoming increasingly popular not only among adult students but wide spread in higher educational circles. The ubiquitous of the Internet and the laptop being promoted as the primary tool to access learning materials are forceful drivers to sustain this trend to be the new normal. The other important force behind the trend of adopting adaptive learning technologies is the wide acceptance of educators who have tried and continue to embrace the incremental improvements by using these methods as tools to affect rewarding results by the success of the students. 

Figure: Personal Learner Profile

http://www.personalizelearning.com/p/toolkit.html

 

References

Personalize Learning – Transform Learning for All Learners. Retrieved from

http://www.personalizelearning.com/p/toolkit.html.

NMC.org (2015). NMC Horizon Report – 2015 Higher Education Edition. Retrieved from

http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-HE-EN.pdf. By nmc.org, Austin, TX 78746.