Case
Study 2: The Verification Vortex
Once at
a systems company there was a manager named Bob who had a big
project to deliver. Since his promotion for saving the company
by putting out a fire in the cubicle he shared with an engineer
called Jones, he'd had several anxious moments. "What am
I going to do?" he wailed to his former colleague Jones,
now one of his senior lackeys.
 "What's
your problem now?" asked a disinterested Jones.
"They
want me to take this project to production in 7 months. I need
5 months just to do the pert chart!" Bob was really panicked. "And
it's not enough to do the project -- they want it to work the
first time. How did our old boss do this in one shot?"
"He
didn't. They fired him, remember?"
"I
don't pay attention to details, I'm a manager!" growled
Bob. "How can I verify that the junk you write is going
to actually work?".
"Well
there is this device, but I can't remember much about it,"
mumbled Jones. "Besides, tomorrow I'm leaving on that company-paid
employee-appreciation junket to Hawaii."
Bob returned
to his office, seething. Could it be that Jones was toying with
him? He spent the rest of the morning plotting to rescind Jones's
stock options, when suddenly a light went on in his overburdened
thought processes. Bob remembered that he had dodged a really
crummy project that Jones subsequently got stuck with. When Jones
performed some sort of miracle, he had gotten the stock options.
 "What was
the name of that device Jones used?" Bob thought. "Oh,
yeah -- it was called the PinPort. That's what saved his bacon.
Hmmm... if the PinPort saved Jones, why couldn't it do the same
for me?"
He approached
Jones with an idea. "Say if you aren't using that PinPort
any more, I'll put it back in inventory for you."
An engineer
unaccustomed to favors, Jones immediately recoiled. He realized
this was a time for the most elegant and sophisticated communication
style he could muster. "What the heck are you up to?"
Bob enjoyed
the back-pedaling. "I just want to put the company property
in its proper, secure place."
Later
that day, Bob looked at the PinPort sitting in the middle of
his desk. It was like a gold mine. After reading the description
of Jones's successful project, he realized that the PinPort would
solve his most vexing problem, verification. But now he needed
to make sure that this was done without undue advertisement.
This must be kept top secret.
Next morning
at the staff meeting, the design verification schedule was the
subject of hot debate. Most of the system parts were of their
own design, so models existed. However, there was a chip from
Unobtainium.com called the PEU (Precognitive Execution Unit),
for which they had no model. Creating a model for the PEU was
a daunting task -- one engineer claimed that it would take 3.47
years to verify the system. At the meeting, the staff was preoccupied
with fighting over the other parts of the process, because in
this game of musical chairs the one slowest to grab the tasks
will have the lightest load, and thus get stuck with the job
of writing the model for the PEU chip.
After
waiting for the temperature in the room to rise to just the right
point, Bob interjected, "Well, it seems there's only one
solution. Since any of you would be over-worked if you had to
write the model, I'll do it myself. That'll take the load off
the rest of you, so you can get this project done ahead of schedule."
After
the initial shock wore off, there were peals of uncontrolled
laughter. "When is the last time you did any real work?"
they all chimed in.
"Glad
to have your support. Well, then, it's settled," Bob responded,
and adjourned the meeting.
The next
week, Bob's staff was huddled by the water cooler. "Why
would Bob say he has the PEU model done?" asked Janice,
a very perplexed engineer. "He barely knows how to turn
his computer on."
Fuzdimple,
the intern who'd been hired after working on Jones's successful
project, questioned Bob's stranglehold on the truth. "Simple:
he's lying. We'll find out tomorrow when system simulation starts."
The next
day, the engineers again huddled by the water cooler. "Maybe
he's in league with the devil," speculated one.
"He
paid off Unobtainium.com and got an internal model," claimed
another.
Just then,
Jones returned to work, quite relaxed after his company junket.
He joined the conversation, and after hearing about Bob's mysterious
new-found engineering ability, said, "Well, I bet he's using
the PinPort."
"The
what?" asked Janice.
"Yes
of course, the PinPort!" exclaimed Fuzdimple. "He puts
the PEU chip on the PinPort adapter, then writes a simple Verilog
interface to access it. The model looks like the PEU chip, but
inside are PinPort calls that access the real chip. It's accurate
by definition."
"That's
cheating!" claimed Janice with righteous indignation. "We
can't let him get away with this."
"What
can we do?" asked Jones. "All the company cares about
is results. They couldn't care less about what engineers want.
Things like one-hour video game breaks or paying for our cold
fusion research project aren't important to them."
Bob came
down the hall. "What's up, sycophants? You seem down in
the dumps."
"You
used the PinPort to avoid writing that PEU model, didn't you?"
blurted Fuzdimple.
"That's
right" glowered Bob. "You need to work smarter, not
harder." Flustered, Bob left quickly.
"Let's
steal his chair," Fuzdimple suggested.
Janice
and Jones looked at each other. They realized Fuzdimple was a
real underachiever. He would need much more training before he'd
make a useful engineer. |
