Wednesday, December 18, 2024

The Real Twilight Zone

The real Twilight Zone is when you wake up and see that there is less than 15 minutes before your alarm will go off.  Do you try to sleep or get up?

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Monday, December 16, 2024

Monitoring Independent Key Indicators

When my support team was monitoring complex financial applications that spanned multiple servers, processes, and software teams, we put in place dual monitoring. First, we had a page that was updated regularly with key database queries (such as the number of transactions currently in transitional states). If counts were building we could detect if certain subsystems were down.

At the same time, we had a page that was updated by software monitoring multiple application logs, looking for certain key phrases.  Many times, if a multiple outage or problem was occurring, we would be notified by at least one of the monitoring methods, many time by both.

The generalized lesson (even beyond software) is that it's good to monitor multiple key indicators that are independently generated.  It increases your chances of catching problems early.

In fact, we found that some messages, if they occurred in a log file were like Spiderman's "Spidey sense!" They indicated that a problem was about to incur in the next 5-10 minutes and allowed us to take preventive measures.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Sunday, December 8, 2024

Notre Dame Cathedral: An Amazing Example of Project Management Success and Strategic Simplicity®

After Notre Dame Cathedral burned down, the French government vowed to rebuild it in 5 years.  Many were doubtful, given the damage to the centuries old structure.

As most of us know, in modern times, major projects almost invariably take longer than planned.  Some giant public-works projects fall behind by decades.

Well, this weekend, after 5 years, Notre Dame opened on time.  This is one of the few massive projects that came in on time.  

One of the reasons for the success was that they followed Strategic Simplicity®.  Like with most projects in the planning stage, people came out of the wood work, suggesting "improvements" and "enhancements" that were now possible with the reconstruction.

The managers, architects, and stakeholders turned them all down.  They focused on one end result: rebuild the beloved cathedral just as it had been.  No scope creep allowed.


© 2024 Praveen Puri

"Billboard Hot 100" for Chatbots

This weekend's WSJ had an article about a pair of grad students at Berkeley who, as part of a project, developed a system to rate chatbots.

Their site, Chatbot Arena, has exploded into one of the most-watched rankings for AI systems.  It works by letting visitors to the site ask a question, which is then answered by two anonymous chatbots.  The visitor then votes for which one answered best. It then tracks the chatbots on a leaderboard.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

A Real-World Example of AI Success

Crain's Chicago Business has just written about a real-world example of business success with AI: Northwest Meat.  This small, family-owned business provides meat to restaurants in Chicago.  They had a daily task that they dreaded: taking orders, and compiling the warehouse schedule for the next day, involving over 1,000 different products.  It involved either the owner, or office staff, spending three hours at night.

Now, they use an AI tool called Choco AI that is designed for food distributors. It's cut their time down from three hours to less than 60 minutes.  Northwest Meat told Crain's that they pay $1100/month for the tool, and the owner estimates it saves him $22k/year in labor expenses.  #AI #distribution #supplychain

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Friday, November 8, 2024

High Tech / High Touch and Medical AI

Today, I was reading some letters to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, written by physicians.

They were commenting on how the current business of healthcare pushes doctors out and into a role like a cog in the machine.

One MD said "I was told that individualized medical care was too inefficient, and I wasn't a team player."

The thing is that health care is not like getting an appliance fixed. We are talking about people's lives, and the stress, emotion, and drama that goes with it.  People need patient-centric medicine.

I think the solution can be found in the title of an old book called "High Tech / High Touch."  The secret should be to give "inefficient" personalized healthcare, and attention, while compensating by making the back office bureaucracy efficient through intelligent use of technology and AI.

Today, it's just the opposite, where medical and insurance paperwork take up so much of doctors' time, and pressure them to reduce their face time with patients.

#AI #medicaltechnology #medicine

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Monday, November 4, 2024

Juggling Glass and Rubber Balls

"We are all juggling too many balls. Differentiate between glass balls and rubber balls — and don’t be afraid to drop the rubber balls." - Praveen Puri

© 2024 Praveen Puri