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2003 at DDC-I... A
Promising Future
by Jennifer C.
Sanchez
Marketing Manager &
Editor DDC-I Online News
As we enter 2003 and my 16th year of employment at DDC-I, I am
blessed with a feeling of great promise for the future. I have seen
many changes over the years and have watched this company grow into
what it is today... a company with strong values and a focused
vision. Although the world around us seems uncertain, wonderful
opportunities are on the horizon for DDC-I.
Customized Services:
Numerous customer partnerships are blossoming. This is a direct
result of our renewed focus on customizing products and services for
each customer. One example of this proven success is our partnership
with the Boeing/Sikorsky Comanche Helicopter Team. From processor
updates to Comanche specific customizations, DDC-I not only provided
the development tools necessary, but also tailored them to fit
individual needs.
New Partnership Offering Safety Critical Platform:
We have strengthened our position in the safety critical world by
forming a new partnership with BAE SYSTEMS Controls to jointly
develop a platform for writing safety critical software. The
integration combines the CsLEOS™ RTOS (an ARINC-653 compliant operating
system) with DDC-I's multi-language development environment,
SCORE®. SCORE-653 will give our customer a well integrated tool set
to enable the development of highly reliable applications.
Product Enhancements:
Many product enhancements are planned for different product
lines, including Windows hosted upgrades as well as adding embedded
C++. Additionally, the TADS product line transitions from a
distribution agreement with Texas Instruments into full ownership by
DDC-I, allowing an enhanced commitment to new and existing TADS
customers.
Maintenance Retention Success:
DDC-I’s "reverse pyramid" organization structure has
been key to the success of our "#1 in Customer Care"
motto. We have aligned responsibility with capability, giving those
that have the daily contact with customers the power to make
decisions. Customers have direct access to product champions, the
development engineers responsible for the different product lines.
The result: Maintenance retention is at an all time high!
As the editor of this newsletter and a member of DDC-I's
marketing department, I will do my best to serve you, the customer,
sharing useful & informative articles throughout the year. The DDC-I
Online News 2003 editorial calendar promises many enlightening
topics that we think you will enjoy. Recent upgrades to our website (http://www.ddci.com) offer a helpful, easy to navigate reference
with searchable customer support data and well organized information
on products, services, news, training, customer successes & many
useful links.
Our mission is clear... We are #1 in customer care, and we
nurture customer partnerships to anticipate customer needs and
provide solutions. It is with this focus that DDC-I is poised
for abundant success.
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DDC-I Exclusive Provider for "TADS Ada Development Systems"
Targeting 1750A, 680x0, and i960
Phoenix, AZ and Lyngby, Denmark – January 24, 2003
– An industry leader in development tools for safety-critical
real-time embedded systems, DDC-I announces that effective February 13,
2003, DDC-I will become the exclusive owner of the respected TADS
product line targeting the MIL-STD-1750A, Intel i960 and Motorola 68000
microprocessors. TADS, which supports the development of embedded Ada
applications, will continue to be available directly from DDC-I and from
our distributors worldwide for these targets.
TADS, previously known as the "Tartan Ada
Development System", was originally created by Tartan Inc. and
subsequently acquired by Texas Instruments. For the past five years
DDC-I has distributed and maintained these products for Texas
Instruments.
"TADS is now a full-fledged member of the DDC-I
product line-up," explains Joyce Tokar, Vice President of
Technology at DDC-I and a past principal member of Tartan’s technical
staff. "Every customer using these proven tools will continue to
receive personalized service and support from the company whose central
focus is embedded development."
The TADS product line combines highly optimizing
compilers with selective linking and modular run-times to generate the
most compact code available. In addition to classical optimizations and
performance benefits specific to each chip architecture, Ada 83 specific
compiler optimizations include data packing, constraint and overflow
check elimination and static aggregate initialization.
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DDC-I’s SCORE® Integrated Development Environment Now Offers Full Support for
Windows Host Environments
Phoenix,
Arizona and Lyngby, Denmark – January 15, 2003 -- DDC-I announces the addition of
native support for the popular Windows computing platforms, keeping pace
with the ongoing migration of safety-critical real-time embedded
system developers to the latest network and enterprise computing
platforms.
"SCORE’s primary purpose is to provide an easy-to-use
environment that guarantees maximum software portability and code
reusability to safety-critical embedded systems developers,"
explains David Mosley, DDC-I’s SCORE Product Champion.
"Support for the latest Windows versions is in direct response
to the needs of our customers, who continue to migrate
safety-critical software development for a variety of projects to
these increasingly popular platforms."
The first IDE to offer multi-language, multi-target and
multi-host capabilities based on non-proprietary open system
standards, SCORE meets the increasing need among project developers
to combine reusable software components, written in different
languages, targeting different microprocessors and often created on
different development platforms. Support for a native environment
compliments SCORE's existing 80x86 and PowerPC cross targets already
available on Windows.
Providing a Graphical User Interface (GUI) while retaining a
command-line interface option, SCORE incorporates project management
tools, online help functions, tool activation and a number of other
efficient features, as well as a universal interface for compilers
and tools. The use of open standards means third-party products are
easily integrated.
"Cost reduction is the driving force in embedded systems,
and SCORE makes the development of embedded applications as
efficient and inexpensive as possible. Its greatest strengths are
the generation of coherent, modular, and reusable software
components, error detection in the early stages of development, and
quick and efficient retargeting of existing code," concludes
Mosley.
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Consensus
Decision-making: Better Decisions in Less Time
By Linda Rising
In a recent article I described chaordic
organizations as a possible model for the way we will work in the
future. Chaordic organizations must use consensus to make decisions.
This seems very inefficient. Are there good ways to make this work
in the real world?
By consensus decision-making, I mean that decisions reflect the
ideas and thought of all team members. The decisions are acceptable
to everyone. It is not unanimity, that is, the outcome may
not be everyone’s first choice, and it is not a majority vote. [ASU]
Peter Drucker says, "You can work or you can meet -- you can't
do both." With today's business imperative to get more done
with less, making every meeting count is more important than ever. I
think we all feel that most meetings are a waste of time. Meeting
experts have determined that roughly 53% of all the time spent in
meetings is unproductive, worthless, and of little consequence.
[Nelson00]
A poll of professionals and managers produced 1,305 examples of
problems encountered in meetings. Of these, the following sixteen
account for over 90% of all meeting problems [Meetings]:
- Getting off the subject
- No goals or agenda
- Disorganized
- Ineffective leadership/lack of control
- Wasted time
- Ineffective decision-making
- No pre-meeting orientation
- Too lengthy
- Poor/inadequate preparation
- Inconclusive
- Irrelevant information discussed
- Starting late
- Interruptions
- Rambling, redundant discussion
- Individuals dominate discussion
- No published results or follow-up action
Let’s see if we can attack one of these: ineffective
decision-making. It’s a time management principle that you should
never put more time and energy into making a decision than the
decision is worth, so perhaps the first rule of thumb we can
practice is: Make the decision even if all the facts are not
known. You will never know everything there is to know about
something that is going to happen in the future. There will
always be some risk. Don't waste time procrastinating. In
practice, however, we get stuck in "analysis paralysis"
and endless discussion. The discussion accomplishes nothing but
wasting time, as we spin around and around endlessly.
But, wait! Doesn’t discussion alter the course of the decision?
Isn’t that what it’s all about? We want to get all sides of the
issue on the table, so that the best possible result can be
produced. If we don’t have the discussion, then aren’t we at
even more risk?
Is discussion convincing? According to one researcher who studied
decision strategies, he began with the assumption that decisions
were made rationally. He assumed that options were collected and
examined and on the basis of logical and rational processes, the
decision was made. He was wrong. Subjects showed little inclination
toward systematic thinking. Instead they would make a gut choice and
then use the information that had been gathered to justify the
decision they had already made. If this is true, then during
discussion we filter information according to our biases and
reinforce the decision we have already made. The discussion, in
other words, gains us nothing. [Klein98]
In today’s pressure cooker environment, many are called upon to
make decisions that affect lives. According to one fireground
commander, "I don’t make decisions. I don’t remember when I’ve
ever made a decision." The reason for the lack of
decision-making: There was just no time. The building would burn
down by the time he considered all the options. [Klein98]
Researchers have studied the way physicians determine diagnoses.
Physicians ostensibly suppress any explanations until they have
studied all the symptoms, to make sure they do not overlook
something. The study found, however, that physicians form hypotheses
and explanations from the very beginning and using these to direct
their examinations. [Klein98]
High-pressure situations and uncertainty make it difficult to
apply a decision-making process. Uncertainty is and will be
inevitable. Because uncertainty is inevitable, decisions can never
be perfect. Often we believe that we can improve the decision by
collecting more information, but in the process we lose
opportunities. Skilled decision makers appear to know when to wait
and when to act. Most important, they accept the need to act despite
uncertainty. [Klein98]
Astute readers will note that these research reports come from a
book by Gary Klein, Sources of Power. It is about an
intriguing effort to study how we make decisions. I recommend this
book highly. It turns our ideas of how we behave upside down.
How we make decisions now
You probably have experienced group decision-making as a voting
activity in which the majority wins and everyone else loses.
Consensus decision-making is quite different. In its purest form, it
requires that every member consent to the decision before the group
can adopt it. The notion of a group of diverse, strong-minded people
coalescing behind decision after decision, and all feeling like
winners as a result, may seem like a pipe dream. Perhaps it only
works, you may think, when some people are willing simply to go
along with a decision they dislike to avoid the pain of conflict.
[Shaffer93]
Actually, the opposite is true. Consensus works only when people
who feel uncomfortable about a proposed solution are willing to
speak up and take the risk of engaging in conflict until a solution
emerges that everyone can support. Suppressing feelings and
reservations deprives the group of the information it needs to make
the wisest decision. If you go along with the majority for the sake
of harmony or time efficiency while harboring doubts or resentments,
you reduce the consensus to majority rule. This not only weakens the
power of the process but also the long-term vitality of the
community. [Shaffer93]
Consensus rests on the belief that every member of the group—however
naïve, experienced, confused, or articulate—holds a portion of
the truth and that no one holds all of the truth. It assumes that
the best decision arises when everyone involved hears each other out
about every aspect of the issue while keeping an open mind and
heart. [Shaffer93]
Once you have developed full agreement, your group can move
forward. No disgruntled minority will drag its feet or otherwise
sabotage your success. All of you will own the decision and will
support it with your full energy. You will know that you have tapped
the wisdom and creativity of every member of your group and
developed a solution more effective than any one of you could have
developed alone. [Shaffer93]
In business organizations, consensus works only when a clear
fallback procedure exists, for example, the leader can make the
decision when the group seems unable to do so. In most groups, the
fallback is the majority vote. One way of implementing this is to
hand everyone a set of cards that can be used to display their
feelings about any decision:
Green – I support the proposal
Orange – I have a question
Red – I do not support the proposal
You can also use thumbs-up, thumbs-sideways, and thumbs-down to
mean the same thing. [Shaffer93]
The real purpose of this article is to introduce you to a process
I learned when I was the technical editor for a book by Jim and
Michele McCarthy [Mccarthy+02]. They are former Microsofties, who
used this protocol at Microsoft to make faster decisions. Did I get
your attention with the mention of Microsoft?
I’ve seen this in action and it works. It may seem complicated
at first, but when a team uses it, everyone quickly understands how
decisions are made and it saves time, but still allows for everyone’s
input.
The Decider Protocol
The proposer says, "I propose <a concise,
actionable proposal involving one and only one issue>.
The proposer says, "1-2-3."
All team members vote simultaneously:
"Yes" voters give a thumbs-up.
"No" voters give a thumbs-down and may also say,
"I refuse to support this," meaning that nothing the
proposer can do will convince them to go along with the proposal.
"Support-it" voters show a hand flat, which says,
"I can live with this proposal. I believe that it is probably
the best way for us to proceed now. I support it, even though I have
reservations."
With the following exceptions, the proposal passes.
If the combination of "no" voters (outliers) and
"support-it" voters is too great (usually about
one-third), the proposal is dead.
If any "no" voter says, "I refuse to support
this," the proposal is dead.
If there are just a few "no" voters, the proposer
resolves outliers’ issues by trying to bring the outliers in at
least cost. No one else contributes except the proposer and the
current outlier as the proposer asks each outlier to express his
requirements for supporting the proposal: "What will it take to
bring you in?"
The outlier gives a single, short, declarative sentence
describing precisely what he requires to be "in." No
explanation or discussion should take place. If the outlier is given
what he requires, he promises to drop all resistance to the proposal
and to support it.
If possible, the proposer makes an offer to the outlier.
If the changes to the proposal to accommodate the outlier’s
requirements are minor, the proposer may use a simple,
"eye-check" of the non-outliers to see if there is general
acceptance to the new proposal. If anyone is opposed or requires a
formal restatement and a new vote, he must say so at this time.
If the required changes are more complex, the proposer must
create and submit a new proposal. The team reviews this proposal and
conducts a new vote, and the Decider protocol begins anew.
If all outliers change their votes from "no" to
"support-it" or "yes," the proposal is adopted.
In many cases, outliers are simply requesting a small alteration
to the proposal. This process allows that request to be heard in the
most efficient way possible. Many times during discussions, lots of
words hide what may be a straightforward alteration to the proposal.
The result of this process is that unanimous "yes"
votes or "yes" votes mixed with some
"support-it" votes are the only configurations that cause
a proposal to be adopted as a part of the team’s strategy. If too
many people feel the proposal is not worthwhile, it will be
immediately and clearly rejected without endless debate. Failed
proposals should only be repeated if relevant circumstances have
changed.
There’s a Yahoo discussion group on Decider and the other
protocols described in the book:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheCoreProtocols/
There’s also a wonderful review of the book by Tom DeMarco:
http://www.systemsguild.com/GuildSite/Books/Books25.html
If you adopt this procedure, let me know how it works for you:
risingl@acm.org.
I’m currently creating a list of topics to tackle for 2003. Let
me know if there’s something you’d like to hear more about and,
if it’s within my power, I’ll try to do it for you.
References
[ASU] ASU Continuous Improvement Resources
http://www.west.asu.edu/tqteam/other.htm
[Klein98] Klein, G. Sources of Power, The MIT Press, 1998.
[McCarthy+02] McCarthy, J. and M. McCarthy, Software for Your
Head: Core Protocols for Creating and Maintaining Shared Vision,
Addison-Wesley, 2002.
[Meetings]
http://www.unm.edu/~sac/meetings.html
[Nelson00] Nelson, B., "Don’t make team meetings wasted
time, bizjournals.com, Monday, June 19, 2000.
http://seattle.bizjournals.com/extraedge/consultants/
return_on_people/2000/06/19/column83.html
[Shaffer+93] Shaffer, C.R. and K. Anundsen, Creating Community
Anywhere, Penguin Putnam, 1993.
About the Author
http://www.lindarising.org
risingl@acm.org
Linda Rising has a Ph.D. from Arizona State
University in the area of object-based design metrics. Her background
includes university teaching as well as work in industry in
telecommunications, avionics, and strategic weapons systems. She is
the author of numerous articles and has published three books: Design
Patterns in Communications, The Pattern Almanac 2000, and A Patterns
Handbook. She is currently writing a book with Mary Lynn Manns:
Introducing Patterns (or any Innovation) into Organizations, to appear
in 2003.
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