Innovate & Operate

All organisations wants to be:

1. a game changer == new products, dropping old ones
2. being predictable and reliable. == same trustworthy product

The business usually wants it all at the same moment with no investment.
A conflict of interests that will last forever.

The choice:

• conservative running as-is (vertical)
  👉🏾 stable - operations
  👎🏾 no process changes, no innovation
• disruptive innovation (horizontal)
  👎🏾 instable operations
  👉🏾 process changes, innovations

Doing two major changes at the same time often results in unwanted surprises, scheduling actions for time is sensible.



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I - Running Changing ICT

Having all years since 1980´s being active at ICT (Information Communication Technology). The focus is mainly "financial services".

Many things have changed. What has changed are the technical laysers. What has not changed is the expected service for the business by ICT.
The most important statement is keeping the lights on while everything is physical placed in rooms dat are preferable kept dark.

The fundamentals of information technology, mathematics, analytics hasn´t changed much.

• Code is being developed and maintained on business expectations.
• Data, information, is being processed and evaluated.

Achieving minor improvements even when required by compliancy rules isn´t that simple as of dependicies with impediments.


..

II - Experiences

I have mostly worked at the technical infrastructure (TI) in the ICT. Not siloed inside the ICT but connected to analytical usage.

Understanding, working with:

• Researchers, Analysts, Programmers at the business side
• Operating Systems, Tools, Security, Data, Databases, Datacommunications
• Setting up concepts and designs whith the ideas needed by business goals fullfilling compliancy issues knowing the technical limitations and possibilities
• Working in organizations with a more short term management goal. The needed long term visions are usually becoming challenges

A lot of the information questions and technical challenges have been kept always the same. The detailed levels are the hidden game changers. It looks like that what once was solved is forgotten now how to solve it.


..

III - Not working, Private

When I´m not at the office working, I could be off. When it is for a longer period that could be a holiday. Having my holidays, I´m charging the batteries.

A place where I can be is like this one.

I can get a telephone call, asking for help, from someone at the office.
After the support question handling off, the statement of my holiday at a nice location. With the modern smartphone tooling you will get a picture.
It has become an anecdotal story with old friends.

IV - Innovate, Closing the circle

The figure of the analaytics life cycle that is at the start of this paragraph, is a result of solving the issues having been confronted with.
It should cover the whole life cycle with all possible involved skills.

Developping a model (data science) is the what gets all the attention. The deployment evaluation and compliancy are not. To bring something through the whole cycle is requiring more capabilities than a single person is able and/or is allowed to do.

The common steps (design - devops):

• 📚 Information, == Ideas, associated information, Project
• 🎭 Communication == Architecting, Research, Explanation
• ⚙ Technology == Realization, Operations, Monitoring.

These three levels can be represented in a rectangle, better is a triangle

Roles

My profession (metier) is: ICT specialist . vcard: J A Karman
Roles are:

• Consultant
• System engineer - System programmer
• SAS platform administrator, engineer
• Many programming languages, including SAS

The working area is: support of customers(business) using analytics within the ICT (tactical - design) and to the details of the system engineering (technical - devops)

🎭 I won´t break my work at the point by just following detailed instructions what to do. I will listen for what I think is realy needed. After understanding the possibilities, going to solve that was is not asked explicitly, within the options that are available.

Contact

I am open for contacts, discussions

jakarman7w7         @ja_karman

You can contact me in case of some interesting questions. Social media names are shown above. E-mail mailto:info@jakarman.nl
I am living at Netherlands Gelderland - j.a.karman
..

Technical - Mathematics

My education is the elektro-technical engineering, added mathematics including statistics. Not quite a logical fit for information technology nowadays. At that moment courses for ICT didn't exist as it was building from scratch being a spinn-off with those mentioned technology backgrounds.

The microprocessor being used during one of the course lines was the 6502 (motorola) . My father had his connections with computing educating and mathematics. As the interest rates went up high for some years there was a problem with the than used calculation tabels became unusable. He did some circumventions using an Olivetti P101 for that at our home.

⚙ My first job was as "technical statistical support" role, helping researchers under supervision of staticians. I switched after some time

System programmer

My background has become the "system programmer".

The descriptions of roles by IBM (mainframe world): Mainframe sysprogrole System programmers are needed to install and maintain the middleware on the mainframe, such as database management systems, online transaction processing systems and Web servers.

Middleware is a software "layer" between the operating system and the end user or end user application.
It supplies major functions that are not provided by the operating system. Major middleware products such as DB2, CICS, and IMS can be as complex as the operating system itself, if not more so.

Changing words for same kind of work

Many positions are able to be found while using middleware, as it is technical, and needing for your business.
That nice IBM description mentioned IBM prodcuts. I was instead exposed to Cullinet (CA) IDMS DB/DC with an IDD (Integrated Data Dictionary) and in house made solutions. That IDD is a centralised metadata aproach using a network (not relational) DBMS and ER schema design.

The role of the system programmer has the same key points of the SAS platform administrator.
Someone has to understand the way to integrate those two worlds to get it effectively well working.

📚 In the Agile Scrum world, chapters guilds but I am missing the captain and business owner.

SAS - software product usage

My experience with SAS is going back as far as the early 1980.
This has become my major working area since 2004. The focus has been the way of implementing that and supporting SAS users (anlysts, marketing, data science) in operational environments.

My knowledge is kept up to date. With the certification program (2013 see personal notes). The order in getting those, was in line with my working approach, logically completely a reversed order.

Security - GDPR - Privacy

These topics are getting recently far more attention. They are a corner stone in my experiences. A mooc certification with the GDPR was done.

Knowledge reference

Sharing

The references are part of the well ordered subjects but the reference looks to originate from a neverland location.

What I am sharing as personal knowledge may be shared, not freely copied without reference.

Mindmap

👓 Click on images in this mindmap going directly to topic page.

Contents - Site structure

Chronological experiences

My working experiences are in chronological (metier this page). At those periods, notes with: situations, actions and results (star).

Reference Portfolio (mindmap).

During my long time experiences some were very interesting by concepts and implementations. I am using:

1. Design thinking.
   The technical details are eliminiated, you easily exchange technology.
   Amsterdam Information model (AIM): tactical, strategy.
2. Devops details.
   The technical details, how to realize and operate, are in scope.
   AIM: tactical, operational.

There are six defined topics and one labeled "sense", that one for what makes sense but cannot given a sensable label. To find your way I made that mindmap.
Table of contents, notes updates: 👓 devops sense (New index)

External references - bookmarks

Most references are made at the main pages of each topic. Topics by a layered structure (see picture).
Some things in the news that get my attention I put seperately here. They are machine learning related.
Note: These links will open in a new page.

link , newstopic interest	who, source	date
Combining SQL and NoSQL to Support Information Context	Barry Devlin tdwi.org	201905
A Brief History of Machine Learning	Keith D. Foote	201903
Understanding algorithmic decision-making: Opportunities and challenges	Scientific Foresight Unit (STOA)	201903
The first step in AI might surprise you	Cassie Kozyrkov	201810

I have long promoted the phrase "context-setting information (CSI)" as a necessary improvement on the widely (ab)used word metadata. The word metadata, usually defined as "data about data," hides its full scope and importance as a first step in recording the context of the data stored. We need the complete context of data to truly understand the real meaning of the data we collect or generate. (B.Devlin)

The right first step is to focus on outputs and objectives. (C.Kozyrkov)

Work Evolution

Preparing data running analyses as requested by researchers. Some analyses has to ran more than once as the insights on the meaning of the data increased. The review and evaluations executed by staticians that is was all done correctly.

When that job would be recruited and published these days it would be named as "data science" and being described with engineering.

The work proces was improved (PDCA kanban) learning from what was expected by requests. When thinking more about that got te conscience that is almost te same steps als was done at the early years when SDM (System Development Methodology, Cap gemini), was promoted.

ICT proces Life Cycle

I have made this recently (beginning 2018).
A closer look and changing words It could be my first job (health research) and the involvment of the first projects at Victoria Vesta (Insurance company) .
👓 There is a link at the cycle illustration.