"Hacker Group" Anonymous

The recent operations against Wikileak opponents and anti-piracy organizations have brought Anonymous back into the media spotlight. However, it seems that many journalists do not understand the nature of Anonymous and its structure (or absence thereof). They frequently use the term "Hacker Group", but this is actually not right.

I would prefer the term "Fluid Organization" to describe Anonymous. A fluid organization is constantly evolving with regard to its structure and its members. There are no clear borders, no defined hierarchies. Instead, its members temporarily organize around a task or cause at hand, and the temporary structure is abandoned, once the objective has been achieved.

Any comments, or better ideas on the topic?

What is a project charter good for?

A project charter issued by senior management formally authorizes the initiation of a project and gives the project manager authority to apply organizational resources to project activities and tasks. It includes a description of business needs and how the project will address those needs.
Though limited to a high-level overview in its initial form, the charter should provide sufficient detail to perform the actions or reference a separate business case that has the following:

• Shows alignment to enterprise strategy, goals and priorities
• Illustrates how the project deliverable will meet specific business requirements
• Establishes clear success criteria based on measures of client satisfaction
• Identifies funding sources and high-level costs
• Identifies qualitative benefits and translates to quantitative measures
• Establishes appropriate interval(s) for updated cost estimates
• Examines assumptions (such as system performance or skills needed)
• Identifies risks and prepares mitigations
• Factors risks against cost and benefit
• Selects the project's guiding principles and methodologies
• Communicates control mechanisms to stakeholder

Freedom of speech

The well known Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan has been sentenced to 19.5 years in prison and a financial fine. And for what? For exercising his right to freedom of speech.

For many years, he has criticized the Iranian regime. In recent years, he has been rather positive to the regime. However, no matter if he likes the Iranian government or not and if anybody agrees to his opinion, sending him to jail for expressing it is plain wrong!

Remember Henry Fayol?

In my previous post, I referred to a paper by the Institute of Strategic Studies at the United States Army War College (Unity of Command in Afghanistan: A forsaken principle of war). Here is the feedback I provided on the paper:

Unity of command is one of the 14 principles of management defined by Henry Fayol. It has been a basic principle in organization design for a long time, and has been debated controversially. Concepts such as matrix, process-, or network-organizations have been proposed as more agile alternatives. However, when it comes to military organizations, those (post-)modern approaches seem to have clear limitations. The paper demonstrates that lack of unity of command in the Afghanistan theater is one road block to success. The conclusion, to rectify command and control structures and re-focus on unity of command seems evident. Maybe, also some other principles that Fayol defined should be remembered, such as Unity of Drection.

Just as a reminder ... Here are the 14 principles of management as defined by Henry Fayol:

1. Division of work. This principle is the same as Adam Smith's 'division of labour'. Specialisation increases output by making employees more efficient.
2. Authority. Managers must be able to give orders. Authority gives them this right. Note that responsibility arises wherever authority is exercised.
3. Discipline. Employees must obey and respect the rules that govern the organisation. Good discipline is the result of effective leadership, a clear understanding between management and workers regarding the organisation's rules, and the judicious use of penalties for infractions of the rules.
4. Unity of command. Every employee should receive orders from only one superior.
5. Unity of direction. Each group of organisational activities that have the same objective should be directed by one manager using one plan.
6. Subordination of individual interests to the general interest. The interests of any one employee or group of employees should not take precedence over the interests of the organisation as a whole.
7. Remuneration. Workers must be paid a fair wage for their services.
8. Centralisation. Centralisation refers to the degree to which subordinates are involved in decision making. Whether decision making is centralised (to management) or decentralised (to subordinates) is a question of proper proportion. The task is to find the optimum degree of centralisation for each situation.
9. Scalar chain. The line of authority from top management to the lowest ranks represents the scalar chain. Communications should follow this chain. However, if following the chain creates delays, cross-communications can be allowed if agreed to by all parties and superiors are kept informed.
10. Order. People and materials should be in the right place at the right time.
11. Equity. Managers should be kind and fair to their subordinates.
12. Stability of tenure of personnel. High employee turnover is inefficient. Management should provide orderly personnel planning and ensure that replacements are available to fill vacancies.
13. Initiative. Employees who are allowed to originate and carry out plans will exert high levels of effort.
14. Esprit de corps. Promoting team spirit will build harmony and unity within the organisation.

After all, for a military organization, that doesn't sound too bad, does it?

Organizational mess - the SOF case (unclassified)

I have been interested in issues in multi-dimensional organizational structures for quite a while. The problems related to matrix-style organizations, such as the inherent conflict between the two dimensions (LoB vs projects), are well known to organizational researchers and practitioners alike.

Basically, a matrix organization is a project-type structure that is superimposed on a functional structure. It is often used in organizations where certain expertise must be grouped for complex short- or long-term projects. Teams are formed with staff assigned from functional units, and when the initiative is complete, people would return to their respective groups.

The idea of the matrix organization is to maintain the characteristics of classical design (division of labor, centralization of authority, unity of control, and unity of direction) while adding the flexibility to work on critical projects. However, using a matrix approach might render conflicts between the different dimensions and these conflicts might include disputes about budgets and funding, authority, control, and accountability. And things get worse, if there are not only 2 dimensions, but even more, thus turning the matrix into a n-dimensional vector.

This can be exemplified by the United Combatant Commands (UCCs) in the US Armed Services. A UCC is a joint military command consisting of forces from two or more service branches (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines). The purpose of establishing UCCs was to provide a more effective command and control structure where coordination and collaboration across branches was required either at functional or geographical level. Consequently, UCCs can have a geographical (AFRICOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM, ...) or functional (STRATCOM, SOCOM, TRANSCOM) focus. The UCCs also report directly to the JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff), and not into any of the branches' command structures. A special role is played by SOCOM (Special Operation Command), which is the only UCC with acquisition authorities.

USSOCOM oversees the training, doctrine, and equipping of all U.S. SOF (Special Operations Forces) units and was established in 1986/87 in response to concerns about the status of SOF within defense planning. In particular, the experiences from operational shortcomings due to lack of coordination between SOF units from different services and the potential funding conflicts between SOFs and regular forces within the services resulted in Congressional measures to strengthen the SOF position. USSOCOM is headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL. USSOCOM has approximately 54,000 active duty, Reserve and National Guard Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Department of Defense (DOD) civilians assigned to the headquarters, its four components and one sub-unified command, and has an annual budget of ~8.5 b$. (Source: SOCOM presentation)

SOCOM command structure As depicted above, SOCOM has four subordinated commands that comprise the SOFs coming from the different branches (AFSOC - Air Force, ASOC - Army, NAVSOC - Navy, MARSOC - Marines) and a joint subcommand (JSOC), containing the so called special mission units (SMUs), most notably Army 1st SPF Operational Detachment Delta (aka Delta Force or Combat Applications Group) and DEVGRU (Naval Special Special Warfare Development Group). In addition, there are regional Special Operations Commands attached to the regional UCCs (e.g. SOCEUR - Special Operations Command Europe attached to EUCOM - European Command). This means, in peacetime there are three dimensions to the organizational structure of SOCOM: The SOCOM internal command structure, the regional UCCs, and the service branches. This already brings up a variety of questions, such as:

• Are SOFs that are located in specific regions under the primary command of SOCOM or the regional UCC?
• How are commands over CJSOTFs (Combined Joint Special Operations Task Forces, i.e. SOF Task Forces with members from different branches) distributed to give each branch a "fair share" of the available commands and related promotion opportunities?
• How can it be ensured that SOF capabilities within the different service components do not overlap, but are developed in a complementary way?

These kinds of issues are debatable and in peacetime, they are interesting topics for meetings. However, if theater operations are taken into account, they are becoming critical to operational success. Considering that there are additional theater specific command structures, as seen in Afghanistan with the CFSOCC-A (Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command) and the CJOSTF-A (Combined Joint Operations Task Force), there are four dimensions to the SOF organizational structure.

Four dimensions influencing SOF in Afghanistan

The above graphic does not take into account the fact that SOFs might need to coordinate with other, non-SOFs, and coalition forces and commands at theater level.

It seems obvious that, with this kind of multi-dimensional structure, it becomes increasingly difficult to set-up clear command and control (C2) structure and to establish operational efficiency and effectiveness.

BTW, the Strategies Studies Institute has published an interesting article on the problem of unified command structures, or rather the lack thereof, in Afghanistan. I had no knowledge of this paper when I wrote this post, but obviously the author has similar concerns. You can find it here: Unity of Command in Afghanistan: A forsaken principle of war.

Total Value of IT

Together with a team of franchising organizations, Gartner and itSMF (IT Service Management Forum) are offering a product under the name of TVIT - Total Value of IT. The aim is to allow clients to quickly assess their IT costs with a focus on Service Management. The concept is straightforward and simple:

An assessment of Service Management process maturity is combined with a high level IT cost analysis and peer group comparison. On the basis of the analysis, potential gaps are identified and measures to close them identified. The initial analysis and gap identification is performed in a short-term-project at moderate cost.

If you want to know more please let me know, or get in touch with the itSMF.

Lead Work Area

I saw the following sign recently. Guess where ... Yes, a shooting range. I believe that there might be some lead around ... especially the flying lead can harm your health considerably.



But seriously, I can't remember having seen any warning sign like this at our shooting ranges during my army time. Was that no concern back then?

IT Cost Containment

Over the past months, driven by the economic crisis, cost containment and reduction has become a major topic. Also the CIO business expectations for 2009 indicate that cost containment is on the rise. Improving business processes has been the #1 priority since 2006, but for 2009, rank 2 and 3 are occupied by cost reduction and workforce effectiveness.

This is also reflected in our client interactions, where cost reduction measures have become a frequent discussion topic. We therefore developed an approach to quickly identify savings potentials on the basis of comparing a reduced set of key metrics of a client organization with peer group data. A significant deviation will not reveal causal relations and automatically define the right measures to address the issue, but it provides an indicator which areas should be subject to a more detailed analysis and maybe a sub-sequent full-blown cost reduction program.

The following pic provides an overview of the complete approach:

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Project Portfolio Management

Due to the current macro-economic situation, many companies are currently reviewing their project portfolios and realize that there might be some dead wood. Is this something to be puzzled about? Not really.

Over the past years, many organizations have become quite good at improving their development and service management processes by applying frameworks and standards like ITIL and ISO XXXX. But, for demand management and project portfolio management, being crucial processes prior to development and operations, there are no real standards or generally accepted best practices. As a result, we frequently see practices that have a significant potential for improvement (to put it carefully) and project portfolios with no or loose governance.

And, many organizations seem to have mental problem with discontinuing projects that do not deliver adequate business value - either because they do no know, or they do not have the guts.

well, I think this will change!

Tax-payers' commemoration day 2008

Three day ago, on July 8, German tax payers could celebrate this year's commemoration day, i.e. from that day on they work for their own pocket and not for the government and social security.

Last year, this remarkable day was July 13, so there has been some improvement (of course, this depends on whom you ask). Nevertheless, it is astonishing that you have to work more than 6 months before you can reap and keep the benefits.

Telekom: Issue resolved

My issue with Telekom regarding the upgrade of my DSL connection was resolved to my fullest satisfaction. The story unfolded like this:
dsl-upgrade-disappointed-by-telekom
instant-science-dsl-upgrade.html
About two weeks after the letter from Telekom's Board of Management support, I received a call, telling me that they had taken the following measures:

For the router invoice, a credit voucher had been issued.

The law firm had been contacted to withdraw their claim

When returning home from my business trip later that week, I indeed had a credit voucher and a letter from the law form in my mail box. So, nothing more to say from my side.

Follow-up: DSL upgrade - Disappointed by Telekom

In a previous post (Instant Science: DSL upgrade - Disappointed by Telekom) I expressed my disappointment with Deutsche Telekom. Well, my mood didn't get better when I received a letter from a lawyer that claimed around 34 € in the name of Deutsche Telekom, but without actually explaining where this amount comes from and how it is composed. I assume that this is rather irregular from a legal perspective.

Consequently, I sent a letter to the law firm, asking for proof that he actually acted in the name of Telekom and also requiring a more detailed explanation of the claim. Some research on the net also indicated that the law firm is well-known, maybe one could say notorious, for its behavior. There seem to be thousands of complaints in various blogs and forums. Just search for "Seiler & Kollegen" and you will be surprised.

And, since I really was in a good mood, I also wrote a letter of complaint to Mr. Timotheus Höttges. Mr. Höttges is member of the board of management of Deutsche Telekom and also responsible for T-Home and Sales & Service. I am really looking forward to receiving a reply.

UPDATE 05-06-08

I received a reply to my letter to Mr. Höttges, Deutsche Telekom's BoM member being responsible for Sales and Service. The letter came from the BoM support unit and promised that the complaint would be forwarded to the appropriate specialists who would get in touch with me.

From the law firm I haven't received any response so far.

I am looking forward to the further proceeding ...

EU - List of restricted handluggage items

I received a reply from the EASA (see below). It declares that the list of forbidden items is not within the responsibility of the EASA and asks me to contact the European Commission instead. Of course, I have already done this. Once again, I am waiting for an answer.

Sehr geehrter Herr Simon,

bitte entschuldigen Sie die verspätete Antwort. Leider müssen wir Sie auch bitten, sich damit an die Europäische Kommission, Generaldirektion Verkehr zu wenden, da die Liste der verbotenen Gegenstände nicht in den Aufgabenbereich der EASA fällt. Sie können Ihre Frage an TREN-AIR-TRANSPORT@ec.europa.eu senden.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

EASA Communications Department

EU - List of restricted handluggage items

The EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) issued a list of restricted handluggage items (Directive 68/2004) on February 1, 2004. The list contains a considerable number of items which obviously make little sense in an airplane, such as explosives, guns, etc.

However, there are also some items that confused me. Why should a golf club be harmful? Have you ever tried to swing a golf club in an airplane? think it might be difficult to use it as an effective weapon.

The list also contains martial arts equipment and list some examples, such as shuriken and nunchakus, and kubatons. However, it also contains an item called "kubasaunt" and honestly, spoken, I have no idea what this might be. I am tempted to believe that the EASA doesn't know either and the term just ended up there as the result of a mistake. Consequently, I sent the following note to the EASA, asking for a clarification:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

in Ihrer Verordnung EG 68/2004 vom 01.02.2004 werden Gegenstände aufgelistet, deren Verbringung in ein Flugzeug aus Gründen der Flugsicherheit nicht zulässig ist.

Unter Abschnitt 1 - Punkt 3 (Stumpfe Gegenstände) werden auch Kampfsportausrüstungsgegenstände aufgeführt, darunter „Kubasaunts“.

Dieser Gegenstand ist mir, im Gegensatz zum ebenfalls genannten Kubaton, unbekannt. Bitte teilen Sie mir mit, was ein Kubasaunt ist, damit ich nicht unversehens in die Situation komme, ein solches eventuell bei einer Reise mit mir zu führen.

Mit freundlichen Grüssen,

Kai Simon

If you also are curious what kubasaunts are, check back later. I'll post the answer from EASA here.

DSL upgrade - Disappointed by Telekom

At home, I have a DSL connection provided by Telekom since 2001. Until February this year, I had a 6 mbit connection with DSL and phone flatrate and I virtually never had any problem with regard to availability. The cost was maybe somewhat higher than with some competitors, but the service lovel made me stay.

Then I was called by a customer representative and offered an upgrade from 6 -> 16 mbit, in combination with a hotspot flatrate. The flipside was a 2 year contractual obligation, but I considered this as acceptable.

A few days later I received the order conformation and another couple of days later the DSL connection was dead. When calling the service center I had to learn that my DSL modem was not capable of a 16 mbit connection and that I would need a new one at the cost of 49 €. I was also told that the cost could be offset against my monthly fee, since I had not been informed about the additional cost.

A few days later, I received the new modem that nowadays is combined with a wireless access point, installed it and functionality was thus restored. I then sent a mail to Telekom customer service, told them about the issue and asked how to handle the refund/offset. I also told them that I would not pay the invoice for the port, until the issue was settled.

Today, I received a call where I was told that a refund or offset is out of question and that I should pay the invoice. The reason given was that 49 € is the price and since they could not confirm that I had not been informed about the fact that I would need a new port, there was no reason to waive the invoice.

I then tried to revoke the upgrade. No, this wasn't possible either since the cancellation period is two weeks. This despite the fact that I had contacted them regarding the issue within this period and the handling time caused the delay.

Well, what I am supposed to do now? Probably send a harsh letter to Telekom manangement, try to enforce the revocation of the contract and then change the provider. So far, my impression of Telekom's service offering has been positive, but this has really disappointed me.