Design and Evaluation of Central Control Room Operations 114
brothke writes "In aviation today, technically advanced airplanes present a unique paradox. Technically advanced airplanes, in theory, have more available safety, and the outcome should be that there are fewer accidents. But without proper training for their pilots, they could be less safe than airplanes with less available safety. The FAA found that without proper training for the pilots who fly them, technically advanced airplanes don't advance safety at all. The reason is that technically advanced airplanes present challenges that under-prepared pilots might not be equipped to handle." Read on for the rest of the review.
In the IT world, staff members are often expected to install, configure, maintain and support technically advanced software. Companies often buy huge infrastructure software, such as CRM, ERP, PKI, identify management, intrusion detection and more, without first understanding how to make them work in their complex environment. Management often is oblivious to the fact that just because they can buy and install the software that it will not work on its own. The reason why so many large software deployments fail miserably is that the IT staff often doesn't have the proper training, support and assistance that they need.| Human Factors in the Design and Evaluation of Central Control Room Operations | |
| author | Neville Stanton, Paul Salmon, Daniel Jenkins, Guy Walker |
| pages | 446 |
| publisher | CRC Press |
| rating | 10/10 |
| reviewer | Ben Rothke |
| ISBN | 978-1439809914 |
| summary | Invaluable reference that can be used for the design, assessment, evaluation an operations of NOCs and SOCs |
Human Factors in the Design and Evaluation of Central Control Room Operations is a fantastic book that shows what it takes to ensure support staff work and operate together, in a formal and efficient manner. The book integrates the topics of human factors and ergonomics to create an incredibly valuable tome. The book details the interactions between people and their working environment, and shows in depth how the work environment can and must be designed to reduce errors, improve performance, improve the quality of work, and increase the work satisfaction of the workers themselves.
While the book was written primarily for control room settings, it is relevant for those in IT if they have any involvement in remote support, security operation centers (SOC) and network operation centers (NOC).
While the book is of value to anyone involved in operation, those who will find the most value are those charged with the management and operations or large groups or operations. If they have management support to deploy the formal methods detailed in the book, they will find that they can create significantly higher levels of customer and end-user satisfaction.
The authors note that all SOC and NOC's have a common feature in that the people operating them are often remote from the processes that they are monitoring and controlling, and the operations function on a 24/7 basis. The many demands of remote and continuous operation place special considerations on the design of the SOC and NOC. The output of the book is that it can be used to effectively to design these operating centers.
The books presents a comprehensive and all-inclusive on the topic of human factors on the following 14 topics: competencies, training, procedures, communications, workload, automation, supervision, shift patterns, control room layout, SCADA interfaces, alarms, control room environment, human error, and safety culture. Each chapter includes extensive diagrams and flowcharts to show how the processes develop.
The book also provides a highly analytical approach to each topic. It details the required processes and procedures necessary to make each subject area work. The book is not only based on the four author's expertise; they quote heavily from other experts and their research.
Chapter 2 opens with the observation that the safe and efficient operation of operating centers and control rooms is dependent upon the competence of the operators working within them. It details how to create competence assessments to ensure that staff is capable of carrying out their tasks safely and efficiently by assessing their skills and knowledge. The authors stress that it is not acceptable for organizations to assume that their staff are competent based on only their exposure to training and experience. They suggest that organizations create a program to determine those competence levels.
Chapter 3 goes into detail about how to create effective training programs to ensure worker competence. The benefit of a trained worked is that they can yield higher productivity and provide better service. Well-trained workers often have better morale and produce less errors. The chapter details the importance of a training needs analysis to properly determine what needs to be in the curriculum.
Chapter 4 is on procedures and is particularly important to those working in a SOC or NOC. If consistent and repeatable procedures are created, staff can provide much a more effective and dependable levels of service. Even with the benefits of well crafted procedures, its development process is a complex one involving the identification of all of the tasks that require procedures, a judgment on the level of assistance required, identification of the type or format of procedure required, writing and reviewing the procedures, and obtaining approval for them.
The importance of procedures is underscored when the book notes research that 70% of accidents and incidents within the nuclear power companies occurred when workers failed to properly follow procedures. In the petrochemical industry, 27% of incidents were caused by situations for which there were inadequate or no procedures available.
The percentage of failed IT projects and large software rollout catastrophes is both staggering and appalling. No other sector but IT would tolerate such failures. A book like as Human Factors in the Design and Evaluation of Central Control Room Operations goes a long way to stop that. The book is a rare one in that it both provides all of the factors involved in the problem at hand, and then provides all of the details needed to obviate those problems.
Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.
You can purchase Human Factors in the Design and Evaluation of Central Control Room Operations from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Re:Anecdote (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure how ABS would make pumping less effective
The ABS can pump the brakes with at least a 90% on duty cycle. If you pump the brakes "by foot" with or without ABS I don't think you'll exceed 50% duty cycle.
Except on snow, that's where ABS will kill you. If you lock non-ABS brakes on snow, it turns the car into a snowplow and you stop extremely quickly, almost as fast as deep loose gravel. Like feel your eyeballs pull outward fast. If you lock ABS brakes on snow, you just merrily glide along on top of the snow, barely slowing down at all, until you plow into someone. If theres ice, neither really works. Given my climate, thats why I specifically shopped for a non-ABS car. I don't know if non-ABS cars are still available, kind of like trying to buy a manual transmission car, or one without air conditioning.
Re:A distant relative Mercedes (Score:4, Interesting)
I bet you have an 8 player and a carberator too. As electronic fuel injection is for wimps.(/sarcastic)
Meredeces is one of the few companies selling cars with radar modified cruise control.
If you don't know what it is and what it does and how it works. When your car starts slowing down by itself oneday you can cause an accident. Just that feature changing a basic tool you use regularly requires training. If you are to stupid to understand why you shouldn't be laughing.
Merecedes was the firstcar company to ship air bags standard. If you want to see what will be in the next decades ever one elses vehicles look at Mercedes. I follow them not because I can afford one but because ford and nissian will soon be duplicating those features.
Yes. Here's a bad example. (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an example of just that - the new Moesk control center [archdaily.com] for Moscow's electric network.
Take a look at the pictures [archdaily.com]. This looks like a movie set for a Bond movie. The architects got completely out of control here.
Notice the suspended transparent bubble for top management. It looks like it retracts into the ceiling. The lower operator's platform has steeply slanted sides, no railings, and chairs with wheels. The huge room only has eight operator positions.
I'll bet that, within a year or two, the people who actually have to run the grid set up a "field control center" with about twenty people with PCs, cork boards on the walls, 2-way radios for talking to field crews, a conference/map table, and some printers. The real work will be done there. A few people will sit in the big room and answer questions for management.
Re:Anecdote (Score:4, Interesting)
On SOFT snow.
Everywhere I've lived the snow conditions you're likely to be slamming your brakes in are either hard packed (no advantage to no ABS) or over the ground clearance of your car anyway.
Gravel is another story. I've got a friend in the oilfield and they specifically teach them braking methods that disable the ABS for stopping in gravel. The techniques aren't really any harder than proper threshold braking and you get the best of both worlds.
Re:UI Design (Score:2, Interesting)
... is quite involved and requires careful thought. Training and procedures are important, but the best UIs should make the next step(s) in a task obvious. A symptom of an overly complex, poorly thought out UI is the high level of training and checklists needed to identify the next step(s) or locate required data. Using the flight deck model, older airplanes needed a large amount of training (and a third crew member) because all of the instrumentation and controls were just mounted on a few panels, with no guidance as to which dials and knobs would require special attention under various different flight conditions. The modern flight deck makes use of flexible displays that remain quiet (dark) until they demand attention. Then, they are presented in a manner which suits the particular task at hand. Like an automated checklist.
It's not just an issue of ergonomics. Older aircraft, even up to the DC-10/747/L-1011 era, didn't have the automation to allow two-crew operations. Engines were mechanically controlled, requiring someone to monitor temperatures, pressures, oil levels, etc. and make adjustments to keep them happy and prevent them from exceeding parameters. Cabin pressurization required monitoring, as did the electrical system. Newer aircraft, by contrast, have things like FADECs (Full-Authority Digital Engine Controller), automated monitoring and load-shedding for the electrical side, automatic cabin-pressure controls, auto-tuning radios, etc. Taken together, these mean that the pilots don't have to spend as much time watching gauges and trying to make sure they don't exceed some critical parameter, or fiddling little knobs back and forth to keep a constant pressure differential, and can instead worry about flying and navigating.
To use a car analogy, imagine having to constantly monitor and adjust choke, mixture, and ignition timing while driving... wouldn't it be easier to have someone else doing that?
Re:Maybe this explains Toyota's problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, this is hardly unique to aviation.
I drive a manual transmission car that possesses a simple key. Should my accelerator go apeshit on me (whether this was a stuck floor mat or a software problem in the accelerator), I have several options to stop the engine from pouring speed into the chassis. Among others, I can push down the clutch pedal (resulting in the engine possibly revving itself to death, but with me able to bring the car to a controlled, if very noisy and probably engine-fatal, stop), and I can turn the key to the Accessory position (which will disable my power steering and the power assist on the brakes, but I can also let up on the clutch to use the engine as a brake and give me back some hydraulic assist). Turning the key into the OFF position locks the steering wheel, which is bad mojo, but at least if I overreact on that one I can get the car slowed down before I hit whatever is in front of me.
The Lexus involved in the much-discussed incident had safety features galore, and was driven by an experienced driver. However, some of the safety features certainly contributed to the accident. Setting aside the likelihood of noticing that a floor mat was stuck under the go pedal and having the time and clarity of thought to reach down and pull it out while the car is accelerating wildly into traffic... an experienced driver knows that in a battle between engine and brakes, the engine will win, so it's utterly vital to get the engine out of play early on.
I've had this happen, and in my case it was a poorly-wired cruise control (aftermarket, that was installed by an idiot apparently). So my first instinct was to tap the brakes, which disengaged the cruise and all was well, I pulled over and physically disconnected the cruise control from the throttle. Obviously, that wasn't the problem here, so the driver probably moved on to another logical step.
In my case, that would be taking the car out of gear. Safety feature #1 comes into play. The car was an automatic, and the interlock prevented the transmission and/or engine from being damaged. It ignored NEUTRAL and REVERSE settings while at speed and under heavy acceleration. If the driver had been able to idle the engine, NEUTRAL would have worked. But he couldn't, and the interlock (a safety feature) worked against him. So on to the next attempt...
I'd continue by turning off the key, which will cause sudden deceleration, a certain amount of loss of control, but will get the engine out of play. However, in this case the starter mechanism was a button that you'd normally push to turn the engine off at idle, but to keep some idiot from pushing the button at speed and shutting down the car, the car ignored all but a 3-second push to the button when the car was in operation. Unless you had (trivial but necessary) specialized training in how that button worked, you might not think about doing that.
I suppose if it was one of those "key must be present" cars with the fancy starter button, he could have thrown the keyfob out the window and hoped the engine would shut itself down once the keyfob was out of range, but I expect another safety feature would have prevented that from happening. :)
So, there are at least two cases where safety features built into the controls of the car made the car paradoxically less safe, at least under these specific circumstances.
Re:Anecdote (Score:3, Interesting)
Intellectually I know that ABS is a Good Thing, but it took me years after that incident to get a car that had them. (And so far, they've not come in handy... but that's more a matter of paying attention to the road and people, and knowing when the gas pedal is a better solution than the brakes.)
Re:Back in my day... (Score:2, Interesting)
The answer is commonly rendered invisible in its simplicity, especially in IT deployments: striking the balance between what developers want and what users want is seldom the goal.
An ethical developer should care about how the code is used, how the application will 'feel' to the user; too many developers laugh at this statement, unless they write games.
Conversely, an ethical manager should respect the sometimes incredible effort and dedication developers have to put in to come up with a decent product given superficial requirements.
Ethical people care about their environment and how they affect others, just like a good flight controller's team. For this reason, besides other obvious ones, they use very inflexible software, such as ADA, to run their core applications. This is again ethical because it strips down a developer's choices to script code that could bring about a plane collision probably during someone else's shift - I can only imagine what unreadable Perl or Python code would do to the safety of our aircraft. Most developers hate structured languages, but if one cares of the outcome and keep the job long enough, they get used to the tightness of the language and end up caring more of its application towards human interaction which can be really fun.
Establishing a culture of consistency is much harder nowadays when all young folks expect to change jobs every tow years; one cannot root ethics in short spurts. I hope we stop running soon, or we may be digging our own holes by running around our tails too much.
Thanks for the comment.
Re:Maybe this explains Toyota's problems (Score:3, Interesting)