I stopped posting when it looked like we were about to reorg, because I got asked not to talk about the reorg until we had made some decisions.

Then there was a big decision made external to the Division, and a different reorg.

Then I was out of the habit.

So, now I'm going to try and get back in the habit, as I have news to share.

tc>

Back in September and October I took a PMP prep course. It turned out I knew what I was doing.

So while Melissa was having her baby, I passed the PMP exam.

tc>

Starting next week I'll be taking a seven week online PMP prep class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. (It was cheaper than the five day course in NYC.)

While I'll be online, I'll want to minimize interruptions, and I may do some of the class sessions from home, where it's harder to walk in on me. I will still be available by email and IM, though I may push you off if I'm doing something difficult in the class.

So if you start to wonder why I'm never around Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, that's why.

tc>

Yesterday was the HST MSR, and while there was little news, there is a little controversy brewing.

COS and WFC3 are making progress toward being flight ready, though in the case of WFC3 they have some very odd things they need to deal with. The oddest is that they seem to have some kind of small particulate contamination on the inner window of one of the detectors. The particles show up in images, but aren't visible in a microscope.

Both teams are now thinking about what support they will need to be flight-ready on the data processing side. Both teams need support for Thermal Vacuum, Servicing Mission Ground Tests, and an Integrated Pipeline Test. Both teams would also like a separate test of association processing. None of the tests seem terribly challenging, though some of the WFC3 world coordinate systems work looks somewhat difficult.

The problem is, as the WFC3 team suggested, that the OPUS people are mostly working on Kepler, and the DADS people are mostly working on HLA. That leaves very limited resources available to support any changes needed (either prior to or as a result of these tests) to OPUS and DADS until some time in May. Since the tests are all scheduled to be done by sometime in March, that's a problem.

You all know we're in the process of trying to find somebody to work on OPUS, and later on Calibration (what I'm now calling the Calibration Products Team, since the acronym is available) to provide a longer-term solution to this problem. However, we need to figure out some kind of short-term option. Mike Hauser suggested that if nothing else, we'd need to move resources back from Kepler to address the HST issues.

Anyway, there will be several followup meetings to understand the schedule, to understand which tests really need to be done early, and who might be able to help out, either from within ESS or from elsewhere inside or outside the Institute.

More news on this will certainly be forthcoming.

tc>

This morning I couldn't decide what to listen to on what turned out to be a very long ride into work. So I set my iPod to Shuffle, and the very first song it picked was Credence Clearwater Revival's "Who'll Stop the Rain."

My first thought was to run out and get lottery tickets.

Of course, CCR's music is (sometimes deliberately) ironic on multiple levels. A "Louisiana swamp band" from the San Fransisco Bay area, four middle-class Californians trying to sound like rednecks "Born on the Bayou." Both Fogarty's managed to avoid Vietnam despite being drafted, and thus wrote authoritatively about situations with which they had no experience. "Who'll Stop the Rain" is apocryphally about the use of Agent Orange and its effects on American troops, and inspired a spectacularly good and under-appreciated Nick Nolte movie.

It was in fact written about the incessant rain at Woodstock, where CCR's sets were all played wet.

Sometimes, however, irony works out.

tc>

Sarah Stevens-Rayburn is retiring, and the Institute is trying to figure out what to do about it.

Claus Leitherer is chairing a committee to define the future direction of the library, so that we can recruit the appropriate person to take us in that direction. Claus writes: Most of the library users are scientists, but some other institute members use this resource well. In order to have a broad perspective I am contacting different divisions to explore whether it makes sense to add members of these divisions to our committee.
and
I am seeking user input from somebody who actually uses the library rather frequently. Issues that will come up are, e.g., the balance between hardcover books vs. electronic subscriptions, balance of scientific vs. non-scientific literature, cost and services, the future of a “traditional library”, etc.

So, if you are a library user, and are willing to participate in a committee to write the new job description, please let me know. I'm not sure how ESS will supply input, but I'd like to see who is interested in contributing.

http://community.livejournal.com/_dilbert_strip/117418.html

I realized recently that I hadn't posted in a while.

I have a couple PA meetings to complete, and then we'll start the goal-setting process for next year. Much of this is still very up in the air, because HR is still thinking about guidelines for us.

As I've told most people, I think we should be doing competency goals, rather than task goals. There are several reasons for this, not least of which is that we don't really yet know what we're doing next year. I've asked people to think about numerical measures, and how we might collect numerical measures.

I have a thought.

Somebody (somebody tell me who) pointed out that software is different because it's a design activity. The construction cost for software is almost unmeasurable. So we should measure software quality by measuring the design outcomes that we want.

Leaving aside affective design elements, we want software that is more capable, more readily modified and maintained, and that is as low in complexity as possible. Since the desired level of complexity is arbitrary (it depends on the feature set) then adding features will add complexity, but fixing bugs should reduce complexity.

So, we should measure things like the completeness (or maybe initially just the presence) of interface specification (in the form, for example, of Javadoc) and internal commentary, and compliance with a standard coding form. We can measure complexity several ways, but the simplest is the McCabe number, which we can directly compute from the code. For each revision, we would examine whether the code got more or less complex, and prefer less complex to more complex results.

So, somebody tell me what's wrong, if anything, with starting to collect those three numbers? It won't measure productivity, but it is a simple set of quality measures. As I previously suggested, the corrolary to the article I sent around is that organizations that don't collect numbers probably suck. This would help us suck less.

tc>

I've seen a few of you send back comments on your performance appraisals, and I want to try and set expectations correctly.

The one goal everybody shares is the "citizenship" goal:


To foster a respectful, diverse and inclusive work environment, each employee of STScI is expected to demonstrate consideration and value for others through such actions as:

• Ensuring that differing points of view can be heard in a professional and collaborative manner by seeking first to understand, then to be understood.
  
• Refusing to tolerate harassing, abusive or discriminatory behavior by bringing it to the immediate attention of management.
  
• Accepting that your point of view is limited by your unique background, experiences and circumstances and can impact your perceptions of others and events.
  
• Actively engaging employees in Institute activities regardless of position in organization, gender, race, ethnicity, age, religion, sexual orientation, lifestyle etc.
  
• Understanding that respect and inclusiveness require action and each employee should serve as a role model for these behaviors.
  

Our expectation is that everybody will do all of these things, and thus will get a "3" or "Successfully Meets" for this objective.

To "Meet and Exceed" a staff member would have to be a leader in diversity issues, perhaps helping to organize talks on diversity, or otherwise be an active advocate for respect and diversity in the workplace. We've had people do this in the past. For example, the members of the DLF THRaC team might have gotten "4"s for this one.

Similarly, it's fairly hard to get a "2" and still stay employed. (At least in ESS.) It's not enough to occasionally lose your temper or advocate a bit too forcefully for a particular position. Someone who consistently tells off-color jokes, and has to be repeatedly counseled on diversity and respect issues could get a "Meets Some," but might also find themselves getting a "Fails to Meet."

Most people should expect to get threes, on this goal and on others, and the more senior you are, the more likely you are to get a rating of "Successfully Meets" on all of your goals.

tc>

I'm about to send out the appraisal form, which we are also using for self-appraisals this year. I need them back by July 7th, so there's not a lot of time.

Feel free to give yourself ratings, as well as make comments that I'll find helpful in writing your appraisal. Feel free to write something separate, too.

The format and layout of the appraisal tool, and the numerical rating system, were dictated by HR and the senior management of the Institute. As a result, you may find that the final rating seems lower than you'd expect. Don't panic.

First, differences of something like ten or fifteen points aren't meaningful. There are five broad categories, and I don't expect there will be anybody in the top category of the bottom two. Within the remaining two categories, while a "Meets and Exceeds" is better than a "Successfully Meets", differences of several "points" within "Successfully Meets" probably has more to do with the math behind the instrument than real ratings differences.

Second, the evaluation is against expectations. If you're a Principal or a Senior, that means expectations are already very high, so the ratings are done against very high expectations. For everybody, the expectation is that you're going to meet the civility standards, so it would take unusual deviation from expectations (either positive or negative) to get anything but a "3" rating on your first goal. The professional development goals are specific to each of you, so we set specific expectations. I, for example, expect to get a "2" on my PD goal, because I only did part of it, and never got around to getting my PMI certification.

We'll be sending the exact same form to your lead (and if you're a lead, your CE) and in some cases to Mission Office people. If there are people you'd like to have me ask for input, please let me know.

But mostly, don't panic.

tc>