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Corporate Newspeak

Entry 1511, on 2013-03-21 at 20:32:37 (Rating 5, News)

Here's some interesting material I want to share from the Talent2 web site...

Under the heading "Payroll - Client Successes" they claim "Our HR and Payroll case studies demonstrate our ability to provide end-to-end solutions that multiply the power and productivity of people." and "Are you an organisation of a few employees or tens of thousands? Whatever your requirement, Talent2 has a payroll solution that suits." and "A payroll provider you can trust."

Here's a description of the group CEO: "JR is well known for his accessible style and genuine interest in his people - whenever he can afford the time he will open the door to listen. This drives one of his greatest assets - his ability to recognise and combine the strengths of people across all levels of the business. JR encourages resourcefulness, synergy and initiative to allow people to realise their own potential and that of the bigger team."

Sounds great, doesn't it? Who wouldn't want to work with such a great company based on those impressive claims? Yeah, if there was even a small element of connection between the fantasy and reality then maybe that would be true. But of course, the real world and that promised by corporate Newspeak are two entirely different things.

By the way, in case you don't know, Newspeak is the language described in the dystopian science fiction novel 1984. Many people like to describe a future where government control has resulted in a repressive regime and where propaganda is a major tool of repression, but in reality I am more concerned with one where large corporations have the excessive levels of control. Even where governments are guilty of the same thing (and they often are) it is often as a result of the excessive influence of big business, so corporations are still the root cause of the problem.

Newspeak is defined as "propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings". After examining the propaganda above and comparing it with reality you might see the relevance!

But back to Talent2. If you live in New Zealand you will probably be laughing after reading the quotes above because the promises and the reality are so different. The complete incompetence and moral corruption this corporation has exhibited in its handling of the new education payroll "Novopay" is so outrageous that laughter is the most appropriate response!

So what is the reality? Well here is a partial list of the ill-conceived decisions made in the design, implementation, and "fixing" of the Novopay payroll system...

First, instead of designing a system which fits the requirements or building on top of an existing system appropriate to the actual requirements, they have taken a generic payroll called "Alesco" which may be a perfectly adequate system in many cases (although I have heard it described as "antiquated") and tried to add a huge number of new functions and modifications to it.

Anyone who does programming knows this is usually a bad approach. Unless the core functions of the system you are basing yours on are robust things will just go rapidly downhill from there. And if the base system is as old as I have heard mention then it is unlikely to be easily extendable because it is not likely to use modern mechanisms such as customisable and transportable code objects.

Second, patching the obvious errors as they appear instead of fixing the deeper issues is unlikely to result in long term stability. Fixing a superficial error which is really just disguising a problem at the core of the system often results in several new errors resulting as a side effect. This is incredibly frustrating and disconcerting to the programmers involved, especially when they are working with someone else's code.

Experts say the review of Novopay shows signs of "panic and crazy practices" and "common database and coding practices not being followed" and "modifications to the core system making a mockery of the decision process" which are all often the result of not doing the basics right.

Third, when you have a large team working on a project there needs to be some strategy for coordinating their efforts, but having an ignorant manager who is interested in nothing except gaining maximum money for minimum effort is likely to be worse than having no management at all (I'm not saying I know this happens at Talent2 for sure but all the signs are there).

There seems to be a policy of minimising costs without any real concern for the final quality of the product (and that includes support, training, communications, and all of the peripheral issues related to a large technical project of this sort). The decision to hack together something out of an existing system which was itself substandard must have been made primarily to cut costs but this can only be the result of greed given the huge cost of the system.

Fourth, there seems to be no indication of individual ownership or pride in the system. When I write some elegant code, or build an incredibly flexible code library, or design a really friendly user interface I feel personal ownership of the result. The fact that the system is almost unusable by most people and has just been stitched together, Frankenstein-style from old parts, would suggest to me that no one really cares much about this project.

I am now going to make a crazy claim that no one should make without understanding the details of the project, but I will make it anyway to illustrate how an alternative approach might help...

If I was creating this system I would do it for about a quarter of what Talent2 have charged for a start because any more is tantamount to theft. Then I would hire about 10 or 20 (the exact number would depend on the details but too many is worse than not enough) really talented programmers and some people who have actually processed education payrolls. I would then design a system from scratch based on open (and cheaper) technologies which would provide great performance for minimum costs.

Because I would have less staff I would pay those I do hire more and I would give them plenty of personal freedom to create really outstanding code, while ensuring that the client (the payroll experts) were the final arbiters of functionality.

There would be no central management but there would be regular, short discussions on how the components would fit together and every module would have a precisely defined functionality which everyone understood. And there would be unlimited free coffee!

Maybe I'm being hopelessly naive but I believe this approach would provide a far better outcome than the traditional management based approaches where the strategies are devised buy a bunch of senior bureaucrats who are completely clueless about the real issues (and yes, again I am assuming a certain amount about how Talent2 operates).

I will say this though: whatever the outcome of my system, how could it possibly be worse than the total shambles the so-called professionals at Talent2 have created now?

You may think I am being unkind towards my fellow IT professionals. Actually I'm not. I blame the management for this mess. The CEO, John Rawlinson started his working life as a physical education teacher and has a bachelor of education from Victoria University and a Graduate Diploma in entrepreneurship and innovation from Swinburne University. Gee, I'm so impressed! No wonder he gets such good results! (that was sarcasm)

The system cost $182 million. For that price I have very high standards and I don't expect a bunch or corporate thieves run by an ex physical education teacher who seems determined to create a totally half-assed piece of crap for the absolute minimum cost possible. Talent2 should refund all the money they have been paid and go home. And in future the government should be a lot more careful about who they hire!

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