Tanta, admit it, maybe you just don't like anything that doesn't have many many words in it

i work in a related industry (tech support for automotive insurance) and 'cheat sheets' or 'faq' or 'quick guides' are in use all over the place, mostly because the actual documentation with screen shots runs past 80 pages on occasion.

'cheat sheets' are a usefull tool even in untimed enviornments when they are correctly setup with a quick listing of items and catch phrases

for example 'repairable vs un-repairable workflow' is a good one. you CAN dig through the giant binder on how to use our stuff, or you can look at the quick start guide which tells you the one change you need to make to your workflow (check the box that says 'total loss')

I have cheatsheets all over my cube, but that's the only thing i'll defend.

the rest looks like I could have done better my sophmore year of college.
(if number_of_submissions > 1 and time_between_submissions < 10 minutes then Raise_red_flags_of_doom = 1)

Tanta

I have done process re-engineering for many years.
Once you agree to the process, you write the rules of how they need to operate. Some call them business requirements and related process flows.

As the propeller heads are cranky code,you are writting senarios to test the rules, and to test all the deviations (go back to your rant about IT a couple days ago).

After testing, but before you implement the change, you go through the documented policies and make the corrections. You also do change mgt to ensure everyone knows of the change happened and the impact to them.

Last but not not least, you have a set of tests added to the compliance checklist to ensure they are being followed. They explain what the test is, how to test it, and the required results. These audit tests have become critical in these days of SOX compliance.

That list of audit checks seems not to be the case here.

1. if audit had been done with frequency, someone should have noticed everything looked too clean compared to histroical results. Smart mgt askes why nobody is reporting bonuses anymore and gets to the bottom of it.
2. If they have this AUS system, then what is the problem data mining to tell shareholders the depth of the problem? Any decent analyst could go through that database looking for markers that flunked the rules and then give you an estimate of exposure. We have been waiting 9+ months for these crooks to come clean. They have been dodging and delaying while praying prices come back and this nightmare goes away.

Time to throw bankers on the bonfire with used car salesmen, professional ballplayers, politicans, mortgage brokers, and pediphile clergy as the honest ones do not want to express the outrage of some soiling their profession.

Who exactly is one suppose to trust anymore?
I am down to engineers and parents.

What is wrong with this country?

I don't see that length is specifically the major issue. Good FAQs or cheats are hard to write a la "I didn't have time to make this shorter" adage. (I've certainly pulled out more hair over certain Abstracts than the entire paper they head.) They should hit the highlights, provide terse reminders of what you need to do in Frequent but probably not Everyday circs. The Full Docs are what you need to plow through to get the minutia of how to deal with a self-employed foreign national with haliotosis applying for a two-flat condo with a down-payment provided by his aunt's in-law's cousin. Or if you're new to the game and can't distinguish a garden variety request from a lunatic's diatribe.

The issue, at least to me, seems to be that that FAQ is a FAF, Frequently Applied Fraud doc. That and no one seemed to care to require whatever intelligence or respect for regulations or, ahem, common sense that supposedly once reigned in the business world.

The only "information" you can quickly find on a single sheet is the kind of information that can FIT on a single sheet.
I once worked for a BIGLAW partner who refused to read anything longer than a page and a half. My question always was - when does it turn from editing into malpractice.

As someone who random people cube-visit to demand the difference between Municipal and New England Townships and which do they have in California? and why exactly can't we make a ZIP-9 fold map? I empathize.

And as far as the drones in the back office,as you have noted in the past,the old timers cost too much and were frequently forced out and replaced by temps or part timers with no background or training.Even in the old days people who insisted on doing a good job and being prudent were tolerated at best...

Tom Stone | 03.28.08 - 11:52 am | #

Sounds like the FDA, CDC, NASA, FEMA, NSA, CIA, FBI, GSA, The Pentagon, and all of the agencies involved in the regulation of banking.

Now where would big business get an idea to do something like this?

Where, in other words, is the "high" tech? We've had AUS since the green-screen mainframer days of the 80s, kids. Thirty years down the road and these things are as easy to fool as Barbie's My First Laptop?

Tanta -- of all the things you've written, more than any I loved the one a few weeks back where you let loose on the mortgage industry mgmt for cost cutting, and 'efficiency', and 'outsourcing', and how just maybe all that was coming back to bite them.

Well... guess what? the managers at lending institutions went to the same schools that the managers at software companies did -- and learned the same lessons: cut costs, make short terms profits, collect big bonuses, get promoted or move to another company, bail out before the problems hit. The software industry is at least as rife with the kinds of superficial efficiency, and complete lack of interest in long term consequences, or indeed responsibility as any industry in this country. Indeed, unlike most any other industry (except nuclear power intruigingly enough) they are legally not liable for any consequences arising from the use of their product -- take that mortgage people! As you no doubt know, ever since the 'liberal' 90's we've been shipping tech jobs, software jobs, to india, after all... they are cheaper. And management, I can quite assure you, pats itself on the back for showing all those stupid geeks that all their mealy-mouth concerns about reliability, and safety, and useability, and customer support, and customer loyalty and branding was just a bunch of stupid geek talk that didn't do nothing for the bottom line. I'm actually in India right now (visiting not working) and I can tell you one thing -- there is absolutely no way that most of the software people trained here are anywhere near as good as americans -- the schools just don't have the resources to provide the same level of care, information, knowledge, nor frankly is there anything like the competitiveness, or numbers of students. Sure, some indians are extremely bright, and yes, some are extremely good at technical things. But destroying americas technical class to make a short term buck that only benefits the managers is another crisis, that while hidden, and while it will never be as plain as the housing one, indeed may never really be put together conceptually as a crisis, much less where it came from, will over the long haul, prove even more devastating to the american culture, and american economy, and american society, as the nightmare in housing created by short sighted, excessively empowered, excessively freed of responsibility, hardy har-har, aint' life grand, good ol boy, MBA's.

You are my hero, Tanta! You've got my vote for head of OFHEO, OTS, the Fed and the FDIC, all at once!

Tanata - I see your MADDOG and raise you the Automated Scoring System for Home Ownership Loan Excellence (circa 1995). "Does the borrower qualify?" "Well, I'll just have to look at his..."

Voicefromthewilderness,

A contractor came to talk to us about our kitchen renovation. He said in any project, there are three things people want.

1. Low Cost
2. Good Quality
3. Fast completion

He said, I can give you two out of the three.

(There is of course a competence assumption.)

The same is true of software, regardless of where it's developed.

Regards,
Pat

... oh yeah... The mainframe's still alive and kicking. The green screen's been replaced with a GUI or browser for everyone but the administrators (and some developers).
(Pat clances fondly at the green glow emitting from monitor #1.)

One thing I never got about the gift rule was how the money magically became clean after two months. I had a small amount of gift money in my mortgage, less than 10%, but my lender nearly turned white at the mention of it. Then it turned out I had been holding it in a bank account for six months. So my six month old gift wasn't a gift, it had magically converted into savings after the first two months... and savings were ok.

I'll accept money not earned means less to some people. But a six month old gift wouldn't seem to mean more than one received today... at least not to me.

Alex

Um, is your comment supposed to relate to what I wrote? 'cause I sure don't get it.

I have told managers that exact same thing, and had them look at me with that hard nosed, 'tough guy' manager look at tell me they want it done yesterday, at half price

But you are absolutely right, they love ignoring quality. which, um, was my point.

Quite frankly, all you had to do was start out your post with the word 'contractor', to tell me all I needed to know about how much insight to expect. And attention to detail, but as too cost, you don't really think that contractors are 'cheap' do you? I got bad news for you -- if you keep getting your 'knowledge' from 'things contractors told you', you might be in for a surprise.

My analogy is agnostic to where the software developers are. The pressure for speed and cost over quality knows no national boundaries.

Although off-shoring something that requires cultural awareness to handle accurately could present challenges to the competence assumption.

Regards,
Pat

Alex

My point was that there is a social cost to redistruting labor overseas, and that the cost will not be paid by the people who made the decisions. It was something of an analogy with the mortgage situation and the banking situation. My other point was that software sucks for a reason, because management chooses short term costs as it's only metric for 'goodness' of software, and that there are systemic reasons for this.

I'm not sure if you are aware of how arrogantly you are expressing yourself for someone who completely missed my point.

But thanks for the lecture on how quality works, and engineering is done, direct from you kitchen contractor.

Hey Tanta, In the Race to the Bottom, I remember seeing a deal where a 1950's style Motel (single story, 20 units) was "converted" to a Condo. Thought I had seen it all at that point until I saw a deal for a Condo-Hotel.......

Ahhh, Good Times............

As an IT professional, on projects like the one you suggest, my first question is "Why are you hiring so many people who are willing to bend the policy rules so much to get iffy loans approved? You could save yourself $50 million just by not hiring assholes."

But I already know the answer - "We want strict policy, but we don't want it to get in the way of making money."

High-tech can never solve that problem. And the problem with high-tech is the sheer amount of work involved when policy changes. The fact is policy changes VERY quickly, often in unforseen ways; if you want a highly configurable-on-the-fly automated solution, you are talking huge expense.

Most of the reason China is kicking the US's ass in manufacturing now is precisely because China IS NOT automated to the hilt. When the assembly line needs to work on a new model, there's no shutting the factory down while the robots are re-programmed and re-tested; humans are MUCH more adaptable than machines.

And that's precisely how cheat sheets come into play. I can foresee all the behavioral logic being programmed into an AUS, and instead of a cheat sheet being generated by the worker bees in a matter of days, it'll take a matter of weeks. But the point to remember is the cheat sheet will STILL be generated and it won't take years.

Why wouldn't a known design flaw get fixed?

The same reason someone removes the safety equipment from industrial equipment. Someone took the safety guard off because it was slowing them down. It won't get put back on till someone get's their arm pulled off.

The phrase I would hear more often than I care to admit when trying to get answers to problems like this was "It's a business decision".

Where, in other words, is the "high" tech? We've had AUS since the green-screen mainframer days of the 80s, kids. Thirty years down the road and these things are as easy to fool as Barbie's My First Laptop? After all the money these lenders have spent over the years on IT? There's something else that doesn't add up here besides a borrower's paystubs.

"IT" and "High Tech" isn't the answer to every problem and is probably completely to blame here, along with their management of course since failure is a team effort.

The systems you are describing and desire are HARD to conceptualize and on top of that require either a lot of experience in the subject domain or truly gifted "IT" people who can tell when they are asking the right questions to the wrong people and when they are asking the wrong questions to the right people.

Most IT projects fail for this reason chiefly. Even "successful" IT projects usually fail a business in the long run if you stop to calculate the cost vs the cost it saves.

Every single person here has been exposed to the IT project that is a negative productivity gain I'd wager, and will continue to be. You will continue to not get what you pay for, get used to it.

VoiceFromTheWilderness writes:
My other point was that software sucks for a reason, because management chooses short term costs as it's only metric for 'goodness' of software, and that there are systemic reasons for this.

Stop pushing the failure of IT projects up the chain.

When you take your car the the mechanic and he doesn't fix it right the first time do you blame yourself for wanting it to be done efficiently and inexpensively or do you blame the mechanic for being bad at his job?

There reason we don't blame ourselves is a combination of ego and self preservation. Not many of us are confident enough we are better then the average to demand that salary premium to continue living the lifestyle we've grown accustomed to thanks to the IT boom of the last few decades.

There is much truthiness in this post and comments. We know it gets archived, but I'm leaving breadcrumbs back to this article.

ed
Why did Rome fall? Because those in power no longer cared about the principles that made Rome great.

Amen. you bring the marshmallows I will bring the hot dogs. I feel the embers burning.

I never said fuck the pensioners. And I meant no such thing.

Maybe my point can be recast: DO/DU or LP or any other system --as used by wholesale brokers -- was (where I worked) an iterative system where inputs lead to approvals or refusals.

I am not saying who cares.
I am not saying that it was good. But that an iterative system allowed for guesses to be re-guessed.

Who owes a fiduciary duty to retirees and clients and such? I think the people rating the securities, or investing the pension money have the duty to look closer than an AU system that didn't look very hard. Whoever sanitized the crap and gave it a AAA rating based on home prices going up forever.

Again, I only chimed in to say that the memo doesn't look like a joke. All that stuff actually happened.

AU/DO let you guess. It was guess or wait 3 weeks. I suggest that many guessed. I don't suggest it's a great way to run a financial system, but either is 100LTV Stated NOO.

but yeah, okay, maybe the memo is a joke.
...
who's laughing?

Well, I can understand writing a cheat sheet to get around a program written by a bunch of brain-damaged idiots who never thought of the possibilities of X. (Remind me to tell you the time the MIT Solar Car Team tried to get the Aztec registered in Massachusetts. "Number of cylinders"= 0 is definitely Not Acceptable to the computers down at the DMV.)