Kenny recently retired from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)--otherwise he would not have time for this blog. Prior to his years at JPL, he had a varied (some might say checkered) career. In school he studied psychology and philosophy. After school he worked for 15 years in the television and film business. During that stint he worked in broadcast TV, production of commercials and political media. In the early 80's, he picked up computer skills and learned the rigors of software development in the school of hard knocks. Along the way he worked for several start-ups including a self-funded venture to build a 6-DOF position tracker for 3D graphics. In the 1997 Kenny landed a small assignment at the JPL. By a stroke of luck he fell in with a group of brilliant colleagues and managed to get hired in. During his stint at at JPL he led a number of software development tasks, including tasks with developers at other NASA centers. Before retiring he had served as Group Supervisor for the Flight Software Systems Engineering and Architecture Group and a Program Element Manager for the command and telemetry capability for AMMOS (NASA's multi-mission ground system). The ideas expressed in these page are, in no small part, reflections on several thousand hours of discussions with colleagues who were motivated by the highest ideals.
Why this Blog?
Writing a blog was not really on Kenny's mind when he retired. Rather, it was a tide of unrelated events that conspired to bring this about. The narrative might go something like this...
The first event occurred about a six weeks before Kenny decided to retire. One task under his purview was facing considerable schedule pressure. A mission customer was demanding deliveries that could not be met. A change of plan and a quick approval was needed. Kenny and the task lead prepared a management brief seeking a green light for a re-plan and relief from less urgent commitments. Their proposal was turned down. They were told that all commitments would be met with additional staff. Kenny appealed that decision and invoked the 'Mythical Man-Month.' In response, they were told, "That's nonsense. More people can accomplish more in less time. That's just common sense."
Four months later, Kenny met an ex-colleague for lunch at a local Whole Foods. They had worked together on several efforts and shared the hope of improving software development practices at JPL. During the lunch, they mused about writing conference papers based on their shared experiences.
The following week, Kenny started converting his home office to an entertainment room. He was boxing up dated-technical books when he stumbled across an old copy of the 'Mythical Man-Month.' He started reading. He had read the book in the late 80's and recalled that, back then, it seemed like the issues had been solved. There was OS-1, Alpha, Unix, SDKs for windowing, multi-threading, 32-bit fast memory, good C-compilers and C++. Experience is a hard teacher; now he knows better. Little has changed since the 60's. As Brooks put it, "I can't help noticing that the nostrums pushed so vigorously in 1986 and 1987 have not had the dramatic effects claimed."
A month passed. The book continued to nag at Kenny. He began making notes and thinking about blogging. In subsequent lunches with ex-colleagues he dropped a few hints and before he knew it, blogging seemed like a good idea. Time will tell.
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