Interaction and Impedance

In the early 1990s, I was on a research and development project called the Enterprise Computing Project, within an area that was then known as Open Distributed Processing (ODP) and subsequently evolved into Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). One of the concepts we introduced was that of Interaction Distance. This was explained in a couple of papers that Ian Macdonald and I wrote in 1994-5, and mentioned briefly in my 2001 book.

Interaction distance is not measured primarily in terms of physical distance, but in terms of such dimensions as cost, risk, speed and convenience. It is related to notions of commodity and availability.

Goods that are available to us enrich our lives and, if they are technologically available, they do so without imposing burdens on us. Something is available in this sense if it has been rendered instantaneous, ubiquitous, safe, and easy. Borgmann p 41

In our time, things are not even regarded as objects, because their only important quality has become their readiness for use. Today all things are being swept together into a vast network in which their only meaning lies in their being available to serve some end that will itself also be directed towards getting everything under control. Levitt

One of the key principles of ODP was distribution transparency - you can consume a service without knowing where anything is located. The service interface provides convenient access to something that might be physically located anywhere. Or even something that doesn't have a fixed existence, but is assembled dynamically from multiple sources to satisfy your request.

As we noted at the time, this affects the relational economy in several ways. It may introduce new intermediary roles into the ecosystem, or alternatively it may allow some previously dominant intermediaries to be bypassed. Meanwhile, new value-adding services may become viable. Over the past twenty years there have been various standardization initiatives of this kind, often prefixed by the word Open. For example, Open Banking.

The example we used in our 1995 paper was video on demand (VoD). At that time there were three main methods for watching films: cinema, scheduled television or cable broadcast, and video rental. Video rental generally involved borrowing (and then rewinding and returning) VHS cassettes. DVDs were not introduced until 1996, and Netflix was founded in 1997.

Our analysis of VoD identified a delivery subsystem and a control subsystem, and sketched how these roles might be taken by some kind of collaboration between existing players (cable companies, phone companies). We also noted the organizational and commercial difficulties of implementing such a collaboration. As we now know, in the VoD case these difficulties were bypassed by the emergence of streaming services that were able to combine control and delivery into a single platform, and the technical configuration we outlined now looks horribly complicated, but the organizational and commercial issues are still relevant for other potential collaborative innovations.

And our analysis of interaction distance in relation to this example is still valid. In particular, we showed how VoD (in whatever technological form this might take) could significantly reduce the interaction distance between the film distributor and the consumer.

People often talk about digital transformation, and want to use this label for all kinds of random innovations. As I see it, the digital transformation in the video industry was largely on the production side. While the switch from VHS to DVD brought some minor benefits for the consumer, the real difference for the consumer came from the switch from rental to streaming, reducing interaction distance and bringing availability closer in space and time to the consumer. So I think a more meaningful label for this kind of innovation is service transformation.

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Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (University of Chicago Press, 1984)

William Levitt's introduction to Heiddegger, The Question Concerning Technology

Christian Licoppe, ‘Connected’ Presence: The Emergence of a New Repertoire for Managing Social Relationships in a Changing Communication Technoscape (Environment and Planning D Society and Space, February 2004)

Ian G Macdonald and Richard Veryard, Modelling Business Relationships in a Non-Centralised Systems Environment. In A. Sölvberg et al. (eds.) Information Systems Development for Decentralized Organizations (Springer 1995)

Richard Veryard, Information Coordination (Prentice-Hall 1994) 

Richard Veryard, The Future of Distributed Services (December 2000)

Richard Veryard, Component-Based Business: Plug and Play (Springer 2001)

Richard Veryard and Ian G. Macdonald, EMM/ODP: A Methodology for Federated and Distributed Systems, in Verrijn-Stuart, A.A., and Olle, T.W. (eds) Methods and Associated Tools for the Information Systems Life Cycle (IFIP Transactions North-Holland 1994)

Wikipedia: ODP Reference Model

Another Update on Deconfliction

As the situation in Syria goes from worse to worser, the word "deconfliction" has reappeared in the press. On Friday, following a chemical attack on the Syrian population apparently by the Syrian government, the USA bombed a Syrian government airbase.

 "Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. US military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield," said a Pentagon spokesperson.

A few hours later, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced it was suspending the deconfliction agreement, accusing the Americans of "a gross, obvious and unwarranted violation of international law".

The normal purpose of deconfliction is to avoid so-called "friendly fire". But in the case of the deconfliction line in Syria, a more practical objective would be to avoid minor incidents that might escalate into major war. (Anne McElvoy quotes a senior former British commander in Iraq talking about the jeopardy of the next crucial months in Syria: "powers tripping over each other – or America hitting the Russians by accident".) We might fondly imagine that the Pentagon and the Russian Foreign Ministry still share this objective, and will continue to share a limited amount of tactical information for that purpose, despite public disavowals of coordination. Deconfliction as minimum viable coordination.

Much less serious, and therefore more entertaining, is the "friendly fire" that has meanwhile broken out within the White House. Gun metaphors abound (cross-hairs, opened fire). Successful businessmen understand the need to establish clear division of responsibilities and loose coupling between different executives - otherwise everyone needs to consider everything, and nothing gets done. But this is not a simple matter - excessive division of responsibilities results in organizational silos. Large organizations need just enough coordination - in other words, deconfliction. It is not yet clear whether President Trump understands this, or whether he thinks he can follow President Roosevelt's approach to "creative tension".

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Bethan McKernan, Syria air strikes: US 'warned Russia ahead of airbase missile bombardment' (Independent, 7 April 2017 11:42)

May Bulman, US air strikes in Syria: Russia suspends agreement preventing direct conflict with American forces (Independent, 7 April 2017 15:39)

Matt Gertz, Breitbart takes on Jared Kushner: Steve Bannon is shielded as Trump’s son-in-law is in the crosshairs (Salon, 6 April 2017)

Matt Gertz, To Defend Bannon, Breitbart Has Opened Fire On The President's Son-In-Law (Media Matters, 6 April 2017)

Anne McElvoy, Washington is confused by Trump’s act. What became of America First? (Guardian, 9 April 2017)

Reuters, Kushner and Bannon agree to 'bury the hatchet' after White House peace talks (Guardian, 9 April 2017)

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Related Posts

What is Deconfliction? (March 2008)
Update on Deconfliction (November 2015)
The Art of the New Deal - Trump and Intelligence (February 2017)

Update on Deconfliction

The obscure word #deconfliction has started to appear in the news, referring to the coordination or lack of coordination between American and Russian operations in the Middle East, especially Syria.

The Christian Science Monitor suggests that the word "deconfliction" sounds too cooperative, and quotes the New York Times.

“Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter sharply took issue with suggestions, particularly in the Arab world, that the United States was cooperating with Russia, and he insisted that the only exchanges that the Pentagon and the Russian military could have on Syria at the moment were technical talks on how to steer clear of each other in the skies above the country.”

But that's exactly what deconfliction is - "how to steer clear of each other" - especially in the absence of tight synchronization and strong coordination.

The Guardian quotes Gary Rawnsley, professor of public diplomacy at Aberystwyth University, who says such jargon is meaningless and is designed to confuse the public. But I think this is unfair. The word has been used within military and other technical circles for many decades, with a fairly precise technical meaning. Obviously there is always a problem (as well as a risk of misunderstanding) when technical jargon leaks into the public sphere, especially when used by such notorious obfuscators as Donald Rumsfeld.

In the current situation, the key point is that cooperation and collaboration require something more like a dimmer switch rather than a simple on-off switch. The Americans certainly don't want total cooperation with the Russians - either in reality or in public perception - but they don't want zero cooperation either. Meanwhile Robbin Laird of SLD reports that the French and the Russians have established "not only deconfliction but also coordinated targeting ... despite differences with regard to the future of Syria". In other words, Franco-Russian coordination going beyond mere deconfliction, but stopping short of full alignment.

Thus the word "deconfliction" actually captures the idea of minimum viable cooperation. And this isn't just a military concept. There are many business situations where minimum viable cooperation makes a lot more sense than total synchronization. We could always call it loose coupling.

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Helene Cooper, A Semantic Downgrade for U.S.-Russian Talks About Operations in Syria (New York Times, 7 October 2015)

Jonathan Marcus, Deconflicting conflict: High-stakes gamble over Syria (BBC News, 6 October 2015)

Robbin Laird, The RAF Unleashed: The UK and the Coalition Step up the Fight Against ISIS (SLD, 6 December 2015)


Ruth Walker, Feeling conflicted about deconfliction (Christian Science Monitor, 22 October 2015)

Matthew Weaver, 'Deconflict': buzzword to prevent risk of a US-Russian clash over Syria (Guardian 1 October 2015)

Ben Zimmer, In Conflict Over Russian Role in Syria, ‘Deconfliction’ Draws Critics (Wall Street Journal, 9 October 2015)

More posts on Deconfliction

Updated 7 December 2015 

What are silos good for?

@markgould13 tells us why the silo doesn't work

Of course they do work - after a fashion. As Mark points out, they are resilient structures, from which we can infer that they serve some purpose for someone in the organization, or the organization as a whole. It is common (Mark calls it a cliché) to reject information or work silos in most organizational contexts. But what exactly is the alternative?

Another useful observation about silos is that they generally represent some attempt, whether planned or emergent, to decompose an organization according to some notion of specialization and clustering. When people complain about silos this could be because they reject any kind of decomposition, but what is more likely is that they dislike this particular decomposition pattern. However, anti-silo rhetoric is often pretty vague about the difference if any between silo (=bad decomposition) and autonomous loosely coupled functional cluster (=good decomposition), and architects who automatically dismiss all previous attempts to structure an organization as "silos" create much the same impression as plumbers and electricians who automatically criticize the existing plumbing and wiring.


The main issue with any decomposition (whether or not we choose to label the chunks as "silos") is the coordination between the chunks, and I think this is Mark's main point. He quotes someone calls Ed Smith as saying

"Insight is the gap and overlap between silos."

Thinking about the requisite coordination between the chunks is an excellent route for understanding whether the architects should pay attention to the shape of the chunks or to improving the links and feedback loops connecting them. Or both. An architecture that is exclusively focused on cutting the enterprise into perfect chunks (relative to a fixed and abstract model of "the requirements") is probably not going to be much use in the long run.

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Update

Chris Bird expanded his Observations on Silos (see comment below) on his own blog.

Excellent defence of silos by Venkat, The Silo Reconsidered

Interesting discussion on Linked-In - What are the advantages of working in silos?

 

Related post: Requisite Coordination (November 2010)