July 14, 2023 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item HIPPO vs. Data
July 14, 2023 at 8:04 am
People want to be data driven while the data confirms the opinions they hold already or provides the basis for an opinion they have not yet formed.
Treasure the highly paid/ranking person who is strong enough and willing to adapt their opinions when new information comes to light. I've met very few. They all had a talent for teaching, curious about a great many subjects and were amongst the most interesting people I have ever spoken to.
July 14, 2023 at 3:02 pm
Oh, boy, Steve, what a topic! I've heard of HIPPO before but tend to forget about it. Working in state government as I do, HIPPO is the primary way decisions are made. And I suspect it isn't just state government, but municipal, county, and Federal government agencies are at least largely, if not primarily, making decisions using HIPPO. It's just the nature of the beast. Someone is elected to a position, they control the money that comes into your agency, you do as they say. It often is hard, because as you pointed out and the blog post you linked to said, there may not be any criteria for measuring how successful following a direction is, because they're set either by the elected official whose following their political/philosophical beliefs, or in response to a campaign promise, or occasionally (although I'd like to think infrequently) done as payback for political support. The way I've seen how accomplishing the goals set by elected officials is by determining how closely we've complied with what was asked, rather than the efficacy of doing what was being asked.
Occasionally someone will strongly disagree with some direction that the Governor or state legislator is asking for. That person will just wait until the Governor or legislator leaves office, then they'll go back to doing what they were doing before. This doesn't happen often, but I have witnessed it. This is normally done by long-time state employees, who've seen lots of people come and go.
I'd like to address the concept you brought up about DevOps, and in particular Azure DevOps and GitHub. I'm working on this very area currently. We have an old, out of support TFS server on-prem. I got stuck being the TFS Administrator back when the previous one left. For many years I advocated for moving away from our on-prem TFS to either Azure DevOps Services or GitHub. A lot of 2022 was spent in deciding which direction to go. I like to use both Azure DevOps Services and GitHub alternatively, so I understand the technology and issues of each. I am fine using either because I'm going to use Git in both cases, which both Azure DevOps and GitHub support. Unfortunately, although I am the expert at both platforms where I work, I wasn't consulted as to which I believe would be better for our organization. This year my boss told me that management has decided to go to GitHub. I've heard that GitHub's marketing team is more aggressive than the Azure DevOps team. I've been advocating adopting Git over TFVC for years, but I've also realized that there is a small, but adamently opposed group of people who will not adopt Git, ever. For them, the motto is, "You'll only take TFVC from me, from my cold, dead hands." Therefore, I would have advised us going to Azure DevOps Services, because that supports both TFVC and Git. I think everyone would have been happy. As it is, I'm sure we'll have some people who won't adopt GitHub at all. It's going to be interesting to see how they go about resisting the move to GitHub as I'm sure they will.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
July 14, 2023 at 3:17 pm
Now I'd like to play the Devil's Advocate and argue for HIPPO and against being data driven. For this, I'm going to use the history of tobacco and cigarettes here in the USA. For hundreds of years tobacco plantations were a major economic force in the US. They brought in a lot of money. Then someone in the Federal government (I don't know who, as I don't know that history well) felt that cigarettes were bad for the health of Americans. This was based upon studies that were done. So those in Federal government decided to do what they could to discourage Americans from smoking and doing their best to curtail the tobacco industry. But think of it, what a thing to do! Tobacco was a major revenue generator. To go against such a huge industry clearly would adversely affect a lot of people, took guts. And I'm sure that whatever data driven forces were in place, would illustrate that reducing tobacco production would hurt lots of people and certainly reduce lots of profit. I am glad that they did take on the tobacco industry and helped reduce smoking among Americans.
So, summing up both this post and my previous one in this topic, although data-driven decision making is the best way to go, I cannot say it is always the best for our society. And although I think HIPPO is not the right way to make decisions, I also think that it isn't always bad.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
July 14, 2023 at 3:19 pm
Now I'd like to play the Devil's Advocate and argue for HIPPO and against being data driven. For this, I'm going to use the history of tobacco and cigarettes here in the USA. For hundreds of years tobacco plantations were a major economic force in the US. They brought in a lot of money. Then someone in the Federal government (I don't know who, as I don't know that history well) felt that cigarettes were bad for the health of Americans. This was based upon studies that were done. So those in Federal government decided to do what they could to discourage Americans from smoking and doing their best to curtail the tobacco industry. But think of it, what a thing to do! Tobacco was a major revenue generator. To go against such a huge industry clearly would adversely affect a lot of people, took guts. And I'm sure that whatever data driven forces were in place, would illustrate that reducing tobacco production would hurt lots of people and certainly reduce lots of profit. I am glad that they did take on the tobacco industry and helped reduce smoking among Americans.
So, summing up both this post and my previous one in this topic, although data-driven decision making is the best way to go, I cannot say it is always the best for our society. And although I think HIPPO is not the right way to make decisions, I also think that it isn't always bad.
Data Driven should be all data, not just money involved. In the case of tobacco, there was a lot of data on revenue and health impacts, which also have financial implications. Not sure this was mostly HIPPO.
July 14, 2023 at 3:23 pm
I think the HIPPO in this case was those Federal government officials who felt it would be best to take on the tobacco industry. Yes, they had some data to back up their claims. But I've seen other government officials also use data, which their opponents may be able to refute with different data. So, at the end of the day, it was those government officials who said that policy was now to discourage tobacco.
But hey, if anyone can prove me wrong in my understanding, I am willing to listen to them. 🙂
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
July 14, 2023 at 8:31 pm
What about the hybrid approach where HIPPO demands data be manipulated to match?
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