INFOR: EAM FOR MOBILE TRANSIT L AG TO LEAD: CALCUL ATING WHAT'S LEF T
FOUNDATION FOR RE-PERSONALIZ ATION
PA T H W A Y S T O P R E D I C TA B I L I T Y VISIBILITY AND P R O F I TA B I L I T Y
ISSUE FOCUS
PROTERRA: TRANSIT REVOLUTION
T A B L E
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C O N T E N T S
The Kopis Edge
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K O P I S
From the CEO's Desk A N D R E W K U R TZ
Infor: A Case Study
Lag to Lead
K E V I N W E N TZ E L
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Proterra: A Case Study
Preventing the Silent Disaster R YAN GEI D E
Foundation for Re-personalization AD AM D R EWES
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CEO’s CEO’s Desk The Pathway to Predictability BY A N DR EW K URT Z
For many years, our organization was incredibly flat. We had the founder, me, at the top—and then there was everybody else. In practice, what that meant was that I was managing the development team. I was responsible for getting invoicing out the door. We had sales people, but theoretically I was managing that team and driving customer relationships. I was even doing our accounting. We had great people who were all doing exactly what they were asked to do, but it was all tactical rather than strategic. •
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ANDREW KURTZ • • PRESIDENT &•CEO
Five or six years ago, we made two key decisions. The first was to transition from an entrepreneurial-led organization to a team-led organization, and the second was to create processes and projections that give us better visibility into our organization at any moment. Both decisions were instrumental in radically transforming the way Kopis works—and setting up an accountability structure that results in greater predictability.
andrew.kurtz@kopisusa.com •
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F R O M
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let go Delegating Results
I had to begin by giving up a lot of control. Anyone who’s an entrepreneur knows that this isn’t as simple as it sounds. To start, we implemented a business management framework, described in the book Scaling Up by Verne Harnish. Secondly, and most importantly, we decided to bring people into the leadership team from the ranks of the organization, and hand over responsibility and accountability.
This was most evident in our annual budget and projections. With our new model, every line item has an owner and a budget. Rather than replacing one person making decisions in a vacuum with another, at the beginning of each period, Adam and Kevin submit their respective budgets for discussion amongst the team. Each person challenges assumptions and offers feedback before we finalize. This new budgeting and management model has resulted in a level of financial responsibility at all levels of our organization, while also simplifying the decision-making process. When I was in charge of everything, I found it hard to make well-researched, informed decisions because I was too busy and stressed. When you’re in the weeds, you just want the problem to go away by whatever means necessary, and you end up overspending because you’re not looking at the financial side from a strategic viewpoint.
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We decided to bring people into the leadership team from the ranks of the organization, and hand over responsibility and accountability. —AN DREW K U RT Z
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Creating • • Greater • • Visibility • •
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Before we even assigned responsibility for each we•had visibility into • P&L •item, I knew • • • our • expenses, which remain fairly constant since we rarely use contract resources.
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However, when it came to the revenue side, the delegation created blind spots. We realized it wouldn’t be • • fair to• assign• responsibility • • for • revenue to one employee without creating the tools to make the job possible. We are a professional services company, so our revenue is as simple as multiplying hours by rate once we have completed the work, but there are enough variables to present some challenges with projections. So, we set out on a path to create projections and build BI and dashboarding that would answer the question "Was yesterday a good day at Kopis?" Answering that question would allow us to aggregate those results and ultimately project. In keeping with our new management style, we also wanted to empower employees to answer that question for themselves, because a good day for a developer looks different than a good day for a project manager. This one area used to be a cause of major anxiety for me. There was never any point in the month when I felt like I knew how we were doing—whether we were going to have a good month or a bad month. In fact, we would be a week or so into the following month, when I had gotten out all the invoicing, before I realized how the month had gone. Now, with our projections and visualizations, we can quickly see at any moment how we think we’re going to end the month. More importantly, we can adjust our projections and course correct if we aren’t doing as well as we’d like.
I•say this • to encourage • •anyone• who is•going through this process, whether as an entrepreneur, department manager, or any other leader of a growing • •business: • • • •
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Again, when I say this shift was painful, I’m not exaggerating. No• entrepreneur enjoys the • • • • • prospect of giving up the reins—this process takes time and it takes trust. In many ways, it’s also easier to not know where • • you•stand at • any moment, • •because knowing requires attention and action.
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The second bucket in this overhaul is closely related to• the first important: • • and equally • • • Visibility. Regardless of who is making the decisions, they can’t make solid decisions without all • • of the• relevant • information. • •
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• process • • of • • The delegation must come with a minimum level of visibility, but the payoff is worth it. You lose a lot of anxiety and stress; you gain an objectivity about your business that wasn’t possible before; you get greater buy-in and an ownership mindset from your team; and you set your organization up for stronger leadership and success that outlives you.
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Infor
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Infor is an multinational company that provides custom-built enterprise software for over 90,000 organizations worldwide. Turn the page to FIND OUT HOW KOPIS & INFOR TEAMED UP TO MEET BUDGETS & DEADLINES.
The Infor development team has created industry-leading solutions for major players in every industry imaginable, designing business applications that are functional, intuitive, and scalable.
The Challenge Kopis and Infor have a long-standing relationship that stretches back nearly two decades. Over the years, Kopis has been brought on as a valuable partner, especially when Infor has a specific need for additional resources in order to complete a contract quickly. "Every time we’ve brought Kopis onto a project, we’ve been pleased with the results," says an Infor Senior Vice President. "We get the benefit of a wellestablished, expert team that knows how to integrate with our workflow. There’s a comfort-level and a trust there that’s well-earned."
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The Solution For this project, Infor approached Kopis with a tight time frame. Infor had recently renegotiated a large, yearly contract with one of their clients—the contract required them to upgrade their existing EAM software to include an iOS app with GIS for locationbased asset tracking. There are two reasons that we typically partner with Kopis: Capability and capacity, explains Infor. "This was an incredibly complicated project, and we needed them for both reasons. While we’ve done plenty of iOS projects in the past, we’ve never had to integrate Esri, our GIS provider, with an iOS app, so we needed their expertise. Kopis was able to provide that specific piece of the puzzle while also delivering a scalable team that helped us fulfill our contract on time and budget." In addition to a location-based asset manager, the end-user needed Infor to develop a GIS integration that operates in disconnected mode so that users can position themselves on a map and see work orders, even if they lose Internet connectivity in rural areas or when working under a bridge or in a tunnel. Working with Kopis, Infor was able to deliver EAM Mobile for Transit, an iOS app that is functional in disconnected mode and auto syncs when a connection is reestablished. "We were impressed with how quickly Kopis was able to plug into our iOS development team and create this specific GIS module for our existing app. Sometimes it’s harder to build onto existing software than to create it from scratch," Infor says. "We’ve released the app now and are working on getting it built into the environment for our customer. They’re happy, so we’re happy."
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The Results While working on this EAM app with Infor, senior developer Josh Spraker was able to spend time on site and sit down with the Infor development team to work out a collaborative solution. "The biggest differentiator with Kopis is the way they work—they work alongside our team through their agile process, with our BA and QA people, our dev team, and our product managers to come up with the best solution," Infor explains. "On this project, in particular, we relied on Kopis as technical Esri experts and consultants. Esri puts out a huge line of products with lots of powerful capabilities, so it was difficult to even know where to start. We counted on Josh to do the research and help us navigate the possibilities." Kopis began the process by scheduling a session upfront to go over the existing code for context and to define the scope of the project as well as their area of expertise. This project was unusual because the details of the deliverables were still being defined, but Infor had a fixed time and budget, so Kopis had to be particularly flexible. They decided to dedicate a scalable group to this project that could ramp up or down as Infor needed. After the initial consult, Kopis checked back in frequently with progress updates and sent the builds to the Infor QA team for testing. As Kopis finished the project, they delivered architecture documentation and held several knowledge transfer sessions with the Infor team so that they fully own the code.
"Instead of going through resumes, I turn to Kopis so I know I’m getting a tenured employee that will be around even after the project is over," says Infor. "You get the value of a team that’s been working together for decades as well as seamless integration with your own process. The Kopis team was able to tie-in to our development life cycle, using our project management system for bug and task-tracking. Since Kopis works as a project-based partner with full-time employees rather than a freelance contractor, we had access to their team after our initial release to solve problems and ensure a smooth transition—we were never worried that our knowledge would disappear once the app launched."
It's almost like you get the benefit of a senior-level development team without the continuous expense of a full-time developer or the uncertainty of a freelancer." — IN FOR S EN IOR VICE PRES IDENT
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Calculating What's Left? BY K EV IN WENT Z EL
About a year ago, after completing our most comprehensive version of "How did we do yesterday," I wanted to improve the range and accuracy of my projections for Andy, but I knew I couldn’t do it alone. We’re a software company, but like our clients, many of our solutions also require process changes. I enlisted help from project managers and any developer that was willing to provide input.
Lag toLead Our goal was to improve visibility into projects by always knowing "What’s Left?"
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Having the kind of visibility we wanted required frequent updates of status on projects, so it couldn’t be the sole responsibility of the project managers to source all this data every day. Rather, we needed to crowd source it. In addition, I wanted to balance the amount of extra data and frequency with the benefit of providing more information to the team doing the work.
direction based on past performance. The formulas we plugged in gave us hours variance, buffer, and overage. In other words; whether we’re trending ahead of budget or moving slower and projecting an overage on the project. Keep in mind, not all projects live on our main project management system simply due to the nature of the projects. We had to cross between a couple of systems, so we went to the data warehouse and built the logic there along with calculations to predict the "What’s Left" number.
Every day, each person on a project makes many microdecisions that can greatly impact a project’s success, but the only way for us to find out their impact was through a series of manual computations, aggregating information from our project management system and comparing it to the contracts.
Finally, we built Power BI reports and dashboards to aggregate all data and make it easier to condense and consume through a visual dashboard. The reports show us on a day-to-day basis the current buffer or overage prediction for a project as well as changes in that prediction over time. We went from having bi-weekly visibility on our most pressing projects and low visibility on others to having daily or hourly visibility on all projects.
Every two weeks at the end of a sprint, we’d create a picture of where we stood on our most concerning projects, but often these projects were variable enough that waiting two weeks for an update could push us past the point of no return. Plus, we’d lose hours creating reports that gave information after we could use it to adjust.
Results
In between sprints, relying on individuals to aggregate the impact of all of their decisions and efforts (let alone combine that with those of others) on the project was not reliable and not appropriate. We humans are not reliable aggregators without a systematic approach.
After implementing the new reporting system, we’ve seen incredible results. We originally wanted to get an advance look into the trajectory of a project so we could make decisions and have conversations when there’s still time to course correct. Let me tell you, everything is out in the open in our cross functional daily huddles, so they definitely create conversations. Having visibility is like early detection for disease. When we find the problem early, our efforts to fix it are more effective.
Technology Changes We needed an automated way to pull details and make calculations without much manual effort. I worked alongside our project managers to find better visibility into projects and figure out "What’s Left" at any given time.
By moving the conversation point up, we strengthen project outcomes as well as client relationships. With early reporting, clients feel in control of the process, making decisions about scope and budget at every point and fits in naturally with our agile methodology.
In our first step, we discovered we needed to implement project set-up changes before we dealt with anything else. We dove into our project management system to put more stringent requirements for how our projects should be put together—which fields we absolutely needed to fill out to make an automated system work.
In addition, it’s been interesting to see patterns along trend lines—our team members have been able to use the results to learn trends, get smarter, and produce better estimates for future projects based on type of work, scope, and number of assigned developers. The system has made us better at managing both projects and expectations.
From there, we built the same formulas from our Excel sprint planning sheets to predict the
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B R E A K T H R O U G H
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Proterra is the leading designer and manufacturer of zero-emission electric buses.
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As communities grow and evolve, transportation needs change dramatically, increasing our need for smart solutions and safer, more reliable, and cleaner transit. Proterra manufactures the world's best-performing zero-emission buses, helping improve the environment and eliminate fossil fuel dependency while reducing operating costs.
Photo provided by Proterra
The Challenge Recently, Proterra approached Kopis with an intriguing project. Adam Fowlkes, Manager, Electrical and Controls Engineering, and Robert Clippard, Embedded Engineer, from Proterra’s Greenville, S.C. location had an idea for a piece of software—a diagnostic tool that they would release in conjunction with their new high-capacity bus—a super efficient vehicle that gets about the same mileage as the high-capacity Tesla.
In the first phase of the project, they came to us with a suitcase full of connecting wires to all of the systems on the vehicle. In order to diagnose, the technician had to hook up to the correct system and could diagnose only that system, continuing one system at a time. Adam and Robert thought that this timeconsuming, technically difficult diagnostic method should be streamlined and simplified.
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Using design requirements established by Proterra, Kopis and Proterra resources began collaborating and developing the diagnostics tool specific for Proterra buses. "We knew this project was going to go through lots of iterations very quickly," said Adam Fowlkes. "So, we wanted someone local to our Greenville facility. We needed a team that had a lot of handson experience on the vehicle and on the HIL bench so they would be able to test quickly as they developed the software and solve any problems that arose. Kopis more than delivered for us." After developing, testing, and retesting, the team completed Phase 1 of the project. The new diagnostic tool includes both a software piece and a hardware device that hooks up to communication ports on the new bus and transmits data wirelessly to the software package. The diagnostic tool can also connect to previous models of Proterra buses. "The software Kopis developed helps to simplify a complex vehicle into easy-to-follow and understand systems," said Robert Clippard. "This reduces the amount of time and effort it takes to not only troubleshoot the vehicle, but it also reduces the amount of time spent training service personnel."
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The software package reads the raw data via multiple protocols and translates that data into easier to understand codes and language— delivering actionable information as well as the raw data. The diagnostic tool also simplifies the data into clear, easy-to-understand visualizations of key metrics for different systems, such as the battery system and the energy distribution system. Technicians can see changes in real time, taking the diagnostic process down to minutes. "It’s really incredible," said Adam. "We went from this big case of wires and a long, complicated process that required technical engineers to being able to walk on the bus with a tablet and see every system at once." The diagnostic tool is more than a window into the bus and all of the internal systems—it’s also a means of communication that can be used by the manufacturing team. Proterra can now program the correct parameters into vehicle and can activate systems on the vehicle directly from the software. "It’s very similar to a Smart Home where you can monitor your house and turn the thermostat up or down remotely, for example. The tool operates on a wireless system. Our manufacturing team can launch the program and click a button to turn on a pump, activate a system, set the correct wheel height—whatever they need to do to keep buses running at 100 percent," said Adam.
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The Results As a result of our collaboration, Proterra now has a stand-alone product from Phase 1 that has been released to internal technicians who will test the software and gather additional field data, letting us know if there are any missing capabilities. "Kopis has been able to respond quickly to changes in the product specification," said Robert. "This is a new tool for us and we knew that the method for data presentation would change as our users were exposed to the tool. The agile process at Kopis made these quick iterations effective and pushed the tool further than we anticipated." In Phase 2, we will be adding new capabilities and information as part of an ongoing effort to enhance the value of the license and their clients’ abilities to sell service to buses.
We went from this big case of wires and a long, complicated process that required technical engineers to being able to walk on the bus with a tablet and see every system at once." — ADAM F OWL KE S — ADAM Manager, Electrical & Controls Engineering
"Kopis is a very professional group to work with," said Adam. "They completed Phase 1 of the project on time and budget, and we feel confident that we have a quality product to launch with our new buses. We’re now heading into Phase 2, also with Kopis" "The experience that Kopis brought to the table in project management, software validation, and programming allowed our product to succeed." Robert added. The long-term plan includes frequent updates that continuously improve the diagnostic tool in order to maximize self-service and keep buses in operation for the lowest operating cost and the least environmental impact—in other words, the plan is to use the diagnostic tool to continue to support and enhance Proterra’s mission.
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prev DATABASE CORRUPTION:
Preventing the Silent Disaster BY RYAN G EIDE
Database corruption is something that is often overlooked, and unfortunately, picking up the pieces after corruption has occurred can be tedious and is often fruitless.
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Let’s start with how it happens. Corruption is almost always caused by the storage mechanism for your data—whether it’s an enterprise level SAN or a standard hard disk. In our experience, abrupt loss of power and firmware updates are the most common reasons for corruption events, but another growing threat is from malevolent actors—ransomware or rogue persons. Despite these causes being seemingly noticeable events, the fallout from such an event may not be immediately noticed because database engines may not find a corrupt data page until days later, when the application asks for it. By then, your options may have narrowed. Remediation for serious corruption can be difficult because it involves not only the high upfront cost of hiring data-recovery specialists but also the heavy cost of lost productivity during the time your system is unavailable.
1. TORN_PAGE_DETECTION A legacy method whereby the first couple of bytes of a data page are saved and compared with what SQL Server pulled from storage; it works well if the data corruption occurred in the first couple of bytes. 2. CHECKSUM The newer and preferred method whereby an entire page is hashed and stored; if even one bit has changed, the hash will be different, and the page can be flagged as corrupt. Databases should be checked to determine which method of torn-page detection they use. Databases brought over from older versions of SQL Server often have the former method configured, rather than the latter.
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Another way SQL Server helps detect corrupt pages during regular operation, is by leveraging one of two torn-page strategies:
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In SQL Server, you can regularly perform a simple task: checking for any rows in msdb’s suspect_pages table. A simple SELECT query on the table will return any data pages that SQL Server suspects of being corrupt. If you find a row in this table, it may not indicate that the data being referenced is corrupt but that SQL Server suspects that there might be something wrong with it due to errors encountered during retrieval, such as I/O issues pulling the page from the underlying storage system.
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So, what can you do to help deal with this ugly scenario? As is the case in many other situations, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Let’s look at a couple of ways we can avoid a potentially disastrous situation caused by data corruption.
P R E V E N T I N G
vention Performing regular data-consistency checks on all databases can reveal data-page issues and help you identify corruption before things get worse. In SQL Server, consistency checks can range from a relatively lightweight scan (analogous to kicking tires and checking oil) to a full, detailed scan that examines the total structure and logical consistency of data pages. It would be a shame to discuss any serious database issue without emphasizing the importance of good backups. Too often, backups are set up in the early stages of a system’s life cycle and never revisited until it is too late. Your best protection against database corruption is to maintain good, clean backups that you can fall back on in an emergency. And, incidentally, one of the best times to run consistency checks is just before you backup a database. If your backup strategy is well thought out, you can mitigate downtime and avoid a tremendous number of headaches. In addition, to keep your database systems running smoothly, it never hurts to ask your resident DBA about what’s being done to head off corruption or when maintenance tasks were last reviewed. Sometimes it’s good to get a second pair of eyes to look things over; after all, familiarity with a system can sometimes cause problems to be overlooked.
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• • • Foundation for Re-personalization • • • Q&A WITH BILL WEST, THE FOUNDER AND TECHNOLOGIES • CEO•OF ELLIPSIS •
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BY A DAM DRE WE S
In the last issue of The Kopis Edge, we • • • talked about how we were well into a period of time where technology has depersonalized of our interactions, • • so many • but that creative ideas and advances in technology have the potential to begin a our interactions. process of•re-personalizing • • Understanding more precisely how we act and think is laying the groundwork for providing and• encouraging more personal experiences. • • Ellipsis, a client company we’ve worked with over • the last • couple • year, is playing a part in laying that groundwork right now. The• first service Ellipsis released was a way • • to determine if the user interacting with a site was a bot or a human that was far friendlier than • • the•dreaded CAPTCHA. If you’re not familiar with their work, here’s a short, oversimplified version of how they do this: Ellipsis takes large number of • • an incredibly • data points from bot and human interactions with a web site where we know for sure which interactions • • are bot • and human. Those data points are used to train their proprietary machine learning algorithm, and later, • an interaction as an the•system• can take input and output a determination (of high probability and accuracy) whether it thinks the•user is •a bot or• a machine. If the system thinks it is a bot, a CAPTCHA appears. If the user passes the CAPTCHA, then we can paint • the•interaction as •a human. Over time, the system only gets smarter and smarter.
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17
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T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
KE: Talk about some different markets where this technology has massive potential, especially around understanding us better.
KE: Ellipsis is a technology company whose focus is on Being Human. What does that mean to you?
BW: The next step for our technology would be to take our core technology, which identifies a user as either human or not, and make further advances that will identify a user as a specific person based on their movement characteristics. We see this technology being used for access controls applications as well as for medical testing for diseases like Alzheimer's where medical professionals could collect individual movement event data and analyze this data over time to determine if that individual shows a degradation in their behavior due to Alzheimer’s, TBI, PTSD and other neural events.
BW: Ellipsis has developed a leading edge technology branded as Human Presence. This technology is focused on website security, and invisibly collects timing and movement events of all site visitors in the normal course of site browsing. We take these measurements and, with our proprietary machine learning algorithms, determine if a visitor is moving like a human, or not. Then we allow users to route traffic accordingly. Humans continue on the site while non-humans (bots) are routed elsewhere. Our first technology identifies whether the actions are those of a human or not; further technologies under development determine whether the actions are those of a specific human based on their current movements matched to their historical movements. KE: In your mind, what is the connection between improved user experience and improved interactions? BW: Research has shown that four percent of typical site visitors leave a site as soon as they are presented with a CAPTCHA or other Turing test. Additionally, up to 40 percent fail on the first attempt to complete one of these tests. Ellipsis understands what our clients spend to drive traffic to their sites and we help them avoid losing or annoying potential buyers. KE: Why is it important to better differentiate and identify human interaction? BW: By identifying human site interaction we by default identify bots and remove them from the site. Bots create a host of problems which include site scraping, form spam, identity theft, DOS attacks and tons of other scams.
R E - P E R S O N A L I Z A T I O N
With that in mind, we recently sat down to discuss this concept of re-personalization and Human Presence with Bill West, Founder and CEO of Ellipsis Technologies.
F O R
Re-personalization? Not quite. But there’s no denying Ellipsis is laying groundbreaking and critical foundations for later work toward making our interactions with systems more natural.
F O U N D A T I O N
nalization KE: What are some technologies or advances that didn’t exist or were not widely available before you started on this journey that are enabling you to build such an incredible service? BW: Machine learning technologies have advanced to the point where we were able to analyze a number of timing and movement behavioral events in milliseconds to determine if a website visitor exhibited human behavioral characteristics, or not. The algorithms that we built with Kopis allowed us to offer our Human Presence technology with a methodology that would not have been technically possible at these speeds just a few years ago. KE: What’s next for Ellipsis? BW: In the near term we are expanding usage for our core product Human Presence™. We are currently deploying with enterprise users, multi-tenant hosting organizations with our cPanel installation as well as via an app in the WordPress and Shopify app stores.
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
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411 University Ridge, Suite 230 • Greenville, SC 29601 kopisusa.com
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