Daily Archives: March 15, 2022

Four kayakers were helped ashore by lifeboats off the north Dublin coast on Sunday afternoon after getting into difficultly in strong winds and high seas.

Howth RNLI in north Co Dublin launched both its lifeboats in response to reports that six kayakers found themselves in difficulty off the coast of Malahide.

One person was reported to have capsized and was struggling in the water amid poor weather conditions with strong easterly winds and one-metre-high seas.

Four kayakers were rescued from the sea north of Malahide with two members of Howth inshore lifeboats crew entering the water and helping the kayakers ashore at Donabate beach.

The other two kayakers made their own way ashore on the southern side of Malahide estuary and were assisted by the Howth Coast Guard Unit.

Thankfully, this call-out in difficult conditions ended well with all kayakers returned safely to shore, said Howth RNLI inshore lifeboat helm Lorcan Dignam.

He urged kayakers to carry a handheld VHF radio or a mobile phone in a waterproof pouch with them in case they find themselves into trouble while out on the sea.

Weather and sea conditions can change very quickly, so its really important to check the weather forecast and what the tides are doing before you go out on the water, he said.

The RNLI operates more than 238 lifeboat stations in Ireland and the UK. It is run independently of the coast guard and government and relies on voluntary donations.

Since its foundation in 1824, RNLI lifeboat crews and lifeguards are estimated to have saved more than 142,700 lives.

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Kayakers rescued off Dublin coast in poor weather conditions - The Irish Times

The Rolling Stones are esteemed for their unapologetic take on rock n roll. Bursting onto the rhythm and blues scene in London in the early 1960s, the band arrived with an edge that set them apart from their peers: Keith Richards.

Danger and Keith Richards come hand in hand, and whether it be on stage, in the studio, or otherwise, he is well known as being musics resident bad boy. Something akin to a musical Evel Knievel, hes had many brushes with death over the years owing to excess and has come back from the brink on countless occasions. Bringing a genuine scent of danger into music, there will never be anyone like Keith Richards.

This propensity for danger helped The Rolling Stones establish their USP, differentiating themselves from the sugary pop of The Beatles and the introspective soul of The Kinks. They appealed to anyone who had a penchant for the darker, raunchy side of rock and roll that was first championed by Chuck Berry.

Nothing was going to get in the way of them having a good time, the police, the media or otherwise. It was Richards who led the charge, and none of this would have happened without him, a testament to his rough and rowdy ways.

There have been many instances of musicians who claim to live on the edge in public, but at home, they love nothing more than a mug of hot Horlicks and getting cosy under a blanket watchingFriends. This is not Richards though. Even his detractors cannot argue that he is not genuine. To this day, he lives out the rock n roll dream, something that puts many wannabees who are three times younger than him to shame.

Although he has lived a wild life and one that has spawned countless insane anecdotes, every so often, Richards does allow himself a period of downtime, which is crucial for a man who has notoriously kept the wick lit at both ends. During these times of quiet, out of the media eye, the musician likes to keep himself busy by reading. The pictures of his vast library confirm this, and in terms of size, it gives us laymen something to aspire to. He loves fiction, non-fiction and everything in between.

One thing is clear, though, he is a lover of tales set on the high-seas, which may come to little surprise, given his iconic pirate-esque garb, role inPirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,and position as musics resident swashbuckler.

One of the series he loves the most is Patrick OBrians classic Aubrey-Maturin series, the first of which is the iconicMaster and Commander.The book was adapted into a celebrated feature-length film starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany in 2003. The 20 novel series is renowned for its well researched and detailed portrayal of early 19th-century life, so theres no surprise that Richards loves it as hes an avid lover of history.

Of the books, he said: You can never go wrong with any of Patrick OBrians books. If youve seen the movieMaster and Commander, its the first movie they made out of his books, theyre very, very interesting.

If youre ever struggling with what to read next, Richards is right. The Aubrey-Maturin series makes for a captivating experience, and for history lovers wanting to immerse themselves in the chaotic lives of seamen in the Napoleonic Wars, look no further.

Watch Richards talk about the books below.

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Why Keith Richards loves the 'Master and Commander' books - Far Out Magazine

Today, we review a Limited Series that turns a pirate adventure on the high seas into a sitcom; and a film that insists action heroes abs heroines can always be exhumed.

This Flag Means Death (HBO Go) You take the fascination people showed for the action/comedy blend of Pirates of the Caribbean, then turn it into a silly sitcom, and you have This Flag Means Death. The premise is that a gentleman would be so disillusioned by his marriage, staid business, and family that he would harbor dreams of becoming a pirate, and actually set out to do that. With a crew of misfits, hes traversing the high seas, but the real issues hounding him are stuff like he abhors doing anything criminal that would entail taking the life of another, hes squeamish at the sight of blood, and insists on traveling with a full library and wardrobe of clothes. Lots of potentials here, as its one ridiculous situation piled on top of each other.

And what if Blackbeard himself gets wind of this self-proclaimed Gentleman Pirate?Taika Waititi directs the first episode and then shows up as Blackbeard in the fourth episode. Hes a Blackbeard thats bored with his success, and very conscious of how he was raised in poverty, while Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) has been cut from a much finer cloth. Blackbeard marvels at the quality of Stedes marmalade, his overcoats and books; and pretty soon, the threat of murdering Bonnet dissipates and a strange friendship between the two flourishes. My issue with the series is how its all pretty tame and outrageous in too safe a manner. Some promising plot devices like that of a woman disguised as a man on board the ship never takes off. Funny, but misses out on being hilarious.

Jolt (HBO Go) Ever since the likes of Liam Neeson and Keanu Reeves turned little action films into outright Box-Office franchises, every Hollywood studio has been out to exhume some action hero or heroine of yesteryear, and turn their reincarnation into franchise film magic. The latest to attempt this is Jolt, which stars Kate Beckinsale. After all, she carried the Underworld film installments in the past, and has been absent long enough to make this qualify as a Hollywood the Return of narrative. And Jolt takes its Action pedigree seriously. As directed by Tanya Wexler, its about this girl named Lindy who had really extreme anger management issues. So bad that at one point, as we see in the prologue, she had to be institutionalized, and turned into a Guinea pig for behavioral scientists.

We fast-forward years later, and Lindy (Kate Beckinsale) wears a crazy contraption on her body that allows her to jolt herself with some charge that helps relax her and keep her from going ballistic. Its a device that Dr. Munchin (Stanley Tucci) has to regularly tinker with and adjust. Things go South when a date that Lindy had, and actually enjoyed the company of, turns up dead. Shes off to find out who killed him and why, and exact some revenge and justice. Nice set designs and use of color palettes to enhance movement and action. But if I had given an award for non-movement, my winner would be Kates face. Not sure what was used to plump up her face and smoothen age lines, but it looks like its been Botox-ed to death, and never moves. Tries so hard to be a compelling action film, but I dont think franchise with this outing.

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STREAMING REVIEWS: The art of reviving pirates & action heroines - Manila Bulletin

You can now vote for Mollusc of the Year!

In 2021, the Great Paper Boat (Argonauta argo) was the winner this year five other mollusc species are competing in a public vote for the title Mollusc of the Year 2022. They were selected from around 50 nominations from all over the world, by a jury of scientists. For the winning species, scientists will decode its entire genetic information.

Hardly any group of living organism is as diverse and species-rich as molluscs, which form the second largest animal phylum after arthropods. But as much as they differ in size, shape, behaviour and preferred habitats: What they have in common is that they have neither bones nor teeth and their bodies consist of a head, a foot a strong muscle for locomotion and a sac for the intestines. Most species live in the water.

Although molluscs evolved about 500 million years ago, they are still one of the largely unexplored groups of animals, especially from a genomic point of view. Many species are even still waiting to be discovered. There is also a lot of information missing that could help to understand their evolutionary development, relationships, adaptations and behavioural patterns. While the decoding of the genetic material of many other animal tribes is in full swing, there are only a few species among the molluscs whose genome has been completely sequenced.

This is where the international Mollusc of the Year competition comes in, which was launched at the end of 2020 by scientists from the Senckenberg Natural History Museum, the LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (TBG) and Unitas Malacologica, the worldwide society for mollusc research. Our goal is to draw more attention to molluscs and make them better known, explains Dr Carola Greve, laboratory manager at the LOEWE Centre TBG. Last year we were very surprised and pleased to see how many interesting and rare species were nominated by researchers, but also from the public. Now we are excited about the new competition!

Among the five nominated species are three species of snails, one species of mollusc and one barge-foot, commonly known as elephants tusk shell. The snails are represented by the delicate, transparent sea butterfly (Cymbulia peronii), a sediment snail with a conical, evenly structured shell (Telescopium telescopium)and a colourful, air-breathing land snail (Polymita picta) which was also nominated last year. Could 2022 be its break-through year? Marine bivalves include shell-less shipworms (Teredo navalis), which digest wood and play a key role in the global carbon cycle by processing plant biomass in the oceans. The barge-foot (Fustiaria rubescens) lives in the seabed and its long shell shape is reminiscent of a small elephants tusk.

What is it?Hi! I amFustiaria rubescens, a scaphopod, you may know me as a tusk or tooth shell, although some people think that I look more like an ear swab. But do not panic, despite my tooth shape I wont bite you because I feed on little microscopic organisms, especially foraminiferans. Only a few scientists have been able to study me, and so there are still great secrets to be discovered in the youngest class of molluscs (ca. 359-323 million years ago).

Where do they live?You may find me in both the Mediterranean Sea and in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean, inhabiting muddy bottoms, normally offshore. Yet, other scaphopodscan be found all over marine environments.

What do they look like?My shell is an elongated tusk perforated on both sides. I live upside down buried in the bottom, and you can only see the thinnest tip, through which water enters and circulates along the mantle for the exchange of water and oxygen, as well as excreting waste. Completely blind and with my head buried, I search for food with special sensory tentacles known as captacula.

What secrets will this genome reveal?Knowing my genome could shed light on the processes of shell spiralization of me and my other molluscs mates, particularly my relatives the gastropod snails, as well as have a broader knowledge about my development (e.g., nervous system). I dont know why, but my group is one of the most unknown molluscs and there is no single scaphopod complete genome sequenced to date. So, I think it is time to pay the attention we deserve and help me solve this puzzle. Would you take a step forward and vote for me?

What is it?The Telescope snail, also known as the Horn snail, Berongan, Rodong and Mudcreeper, is a rare type of gastropod mollusk that is associated with the Potamididae gastropod family.

Where do they live?Mangrove forests along the Indian Ocean are its native environment.Currently known dwellings include the mangrove regions of the following countries: Pakistan,Goa (India), Chantaburi Prov. (SE Thailand), Panglao (Philippines), Queensland (Australia),Northern Territory (Australia), Western Australia, Singapore, Madagascar, Runion Island,Cambodia, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea.

What do they look like?Telescopium telescopium shells are either black or very dark reddish brown. It can be easily recognizable by its long, cone-shaped shell with even like structure. They also have a fold on the columella of their shells, which makes them the only gastropod in the Potamidiae family to have so. Despite the obvious color of the shell they are often covered in barnacles and mud obscuring the natural color.

What secrets will this genome reveal?Telescopium is a mangrove inhabitant. Mangroves are found in two different areas (pristine and polluted) on Pakistan coastline. Many gastropod species of mangrove areas have been disappeared due to anthropogenic and industrial pollution, while T. telescopiumis surviving under pollution stress. The genome will reveal the secret how the present species is surviving in polluted areas and what changes it has adopted from the environment while other species of gastropods have been diminished from the same areas. Also it will be comparative findings between polluted and non-polluted areas representing the important habitats of the mentioned species.

What is it?Cymbulia peroniiis a large species of pteropod, snails that spend their entire lives drifting in the open sea. It is the species that inspired French fishermen to coin the term papillon de mer or sea butterfly in the eighteenth century.

Where do they live?The species has been reported from all oceans around the world. We dont know how many there are, because they avoid plankton nets, and occur deeper than most other plankton (below 200 meters depth).

What do they look like?As a remarkable example of adaptation to pelagic life, these 6 cm wide mesmerizing animals have a gelatinous external shell in the form of a transparent slipper. They also have a snail foot that has transformed into two wing-like structures that enable them to fly through the water column.

What secrets will this genome reveal?Its genome will provide general insight into adaptation to life in the open ocean as well as shed light onto the molecular machinery needed to build their fragile shells. As our oceans are becoming more acidic, sea butterflies are widely used as canaries in the coal mine to indicate the impact of ocean acidification on marine calcifiers. Knowing their genome will be important for understanding their ability to adapt to the rapid ocean changes.

What is it?An endangered Cuban snail famed for its colourful shell variation and enigmatic love dart, a device to stab mating partners to transfer sexual hormones.

Where do they live?Only in Eastern Cuba, in a wide variety of habitats, from xerophytic shrubs woodland to rainforests, and plantations where they benefit local agriculture by eating the moss and lichen on the leaves.

What do they look like?Possibly the most beautiful snail in the world, 2-3 cm across, in yellow, red, green, orange, white, black, or pink, with bold spiral bands. They are hermaphrodites, breeding in the rainy season with elaborate traumatic mating rituals, and living for around 1-2 years.

What secrets will this genome reveal?An assembled genome of this iconic species would provide the basis for understanding the evolutionary origin of the shell color variation and love dart shooting behaviour. Moreover, as the snails are threatened with extinction due to habitat loss and poaching genomic resources would help establish units of conservation, ultimately protecting this species and as an umbrella to protect other species in the same habitatP

What is it?Im a clam, but I look worm. In fact, people call me a shipworm. This is because, for thousands of years, I used to eat through the hulls of wooden ships. I even changed the course of history just ask Columbus, I ate all his ships and stranded him in Jamaica! Sadly, maritime engineers have now come up with new paints and materials to stop me eating their boats.

Where do they live?I live worldwide throughout the tropics and subtropics. You can find me anywhere where there is plenty of wood in the waterfrom the pier at your favourite beach, to driftwood on the high seas, and the trees in mangroves swamps. Some of my shipworm cousins can even eat and burrow into rock!

What do they look like?As a juvenile, I take the form of a free-swimming larva, much like other bivalves. Once I have settled down on a tasty piece of wood and take my adult form, I look like a cross between a snake and a clam long and bendy like a snake, but with a pale yellowy flesh like a clam.

What secrets will this genome reveal?There is outstanding potential (unfortunately for me!) for us shipworms to be a food of the future, reared on a mass scale for benefit to human health and the environment. We grow incredibly fast some of us can reach over a metre in length in just 6 months. We can survive on waste wood and algae which can be grown using by-products from industry. We are incredibly nutrient rich, containing high levels of omega-3 and other important micronutrients. Our gills also contain many bacteria which could help develop new drugs, including antibiotics. In the past, we were considered villains. But our future (and our genome) may just help save humanity.

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Vote for the Mollusc of the Year - SCUBA News - SCUBA News

According to Aemet, storm Celia will affect almost the entire peninsula and the Canary and Balearic archipelagos as well, with abundant rainfall and sometimes mud, strong winds and rough seas.

The State Meteorological Agency has announced that a new storm will form in the southwest of the Peninsula throughout Sunday afternoon, which will influence the weather for the next few days throughout Spain.

On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday the storm will remain stationary in the southwest of the Peninsula.

Storm Celia in the Canaries

Storm Celia is also expected to affect the Canary Islands, at least on Monday and Tuesday, with rainfall that will be persistent in the north of the islands and will be accompanied by northerly winds with strong or very strong gusts and rough seas.

The Canary Islands remain on alert for strong wind and high waves on Monday and Tuesday as well

There's an orange alert activated in the Canary Islands this Monday due to strong winds and waves, which has been extended for Tuesday as well, including also the possibility of snow at altitudes over 1500 m in Tenerife and La Palma.

Maximum wind gusts of 70 to 90 km/h are expected, as well as high waves of 5 to 6 meters, which is why the alert is also in place for coastal phenomena.

Aemet remarked that in this type of situation there's a high degree of uncertainty, since small variations in the position of the storm can lead to a significant change in the geographical distribution and intensity of rainfall.

Below is the official announcement from Aemet, but the document is available only in Spanish

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Storm Celia will affect the Canary Islands on Monday - GuideToCanaryIslands

Since the war began, about 150,000 Ukrainians have been fleeing every day into neighbouring states. That rate has begun to fall as the conflict grinds toward its fourth week, but it may tick back up with potentially intense fighting looming in Kyiv, Odessa and western Ukraine. Either way, the total number of Ukrainian refugees looks set to hit three million this week and could surge past four million by the end of the month.

Already the Ukrainian wave washing over Europe is twice the size of the 2015-16 tide of mostly Muslim refugees that shook the West. Back then, Europe and the US seemed horrified at the prospect of millions of new Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan neighbours perhaps you remember the former US president Donald Trumps so-called Muslim ban or the German far-rights warnings of a coming Eurabia.

An installation by activists, next to Berlin's Reichstag, using 300 life vests originally left behind by migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos on December 5, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. Getty

The installation in Berlin, on December 5, 2021. Getty

Today the prevailing western view seems to be that desperate Ukrainians are like us, so let them come. Many observers have noted the not-so-subtle racism in the Wests response. However condescending this may be toward Middle Easterners, it is good news for desperate Ukrainians, who have the added advantage of EU land borders and thus need not brave the high seas to find sanctuary.

Since 2014, more than 25,000 migrants have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, according to German firm Statista. Although I can personally confirm that crossing the border from Ukraine into the EU is no picnic, as far as I know, no Ukrainians have died during processing.

Poland has stood out with its generosity, welcoming nearly two million Ukrainians

Ukraines conflict, however dire, is not yet the Syrian civil war: since 2011 more than 13 million Syrians have been forced from their homes, more than half the countrys pre-war population, including nearly seven million refugees. Thus far, about 11-12 per cent of Ukraines 45 million citizens have been displaced and 7 per cent have fled abroad.

Still, thats a sizable slice of humanity, particularly in such a short period of time, and Europe deserves applause for its willingness to process millions of arrivals in a matter of days. Western countries, particularly EU states, have to their credit largely flung open their doors, even as their leaders have been busy determining the wisest military and economic response.

Perhaps driven by its own historical clashes with Russia, Poland has stood out with its generosity welcoming nearly two million Ukrainians with no help from top aid groups like the Red Cross or UN refugee agency because Poles have opened their homes, hotels and hearts. Its a good start, but more than likely, it really is merely the beginning.

As much as I would prefer to not consider the possibility of a years-long conflict or Russian occupation of Ukraine, Europe may soon need to figure out a long-term approach for handling and even integrating all the Ukrainians having to leave their country. One model that comes to mind is Turkey, which has hosted more than four million mainly Syrian refugees for nearly a decade and offers some parallels with the current crisis.

A refugee camp in the border town of Yayladag in Turkey's Hatay province. The Turkish Red Crescent set up several camps in Yayladag when the first Syrian refugees arrived. Osman Orsal / Reuters

For starters, Turks and Syrians are both primarily Muslim, just as Poles and Ukrainians are mainly Christian, though the former favour Catholicism and the latter the Orthodox church. The flip side of the Wests apparent refugee bias is that the idea of integrating Ukrainians into Poland and other mainly Christian EU states should be much less panic-inducing.

The cuisines and cultures of eastern Poland and western Ukraine are in some areas nearly interchangeable

In addition, Turkish territories along the border with Syria are steeped in Arab and Levantine culture, from food to language and music. Hatay became a province of Turkey only in 1939, a move still disputed by Damascus. Unsurprisingly, these areas have shouldered much of Turkeys refugee burden: Syrians now make up about one third of the population of the Turkish city of Gaziantep and a quarter of neighbouring Sanliurfa, compared to 6-7 per cent of Istanbul.

Similarly, eastern Poland and western Ukraine have a great deal of shared history, including the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Holocaust and stints under Russian control. Lviv, which has in recent days emerged as Ukrainians main domestic refuge, was Polish-controlled and known as Lwow for much of the Middle Ages. Separated by a language, as with borderland Syrians and Turks, the cuisines and cultures of eastern Poland and western Ukraine are in some areas nearly interchangeable.

The situation seems ripe for Poland to now play the Turkey role in response to its destabilising next-door war. Even before the conflict, Poland was home to more than a million Ukrainians, their largest diaspora in Europe, and served as a key recruiting ground and logistical conduit for Ukrainians returning home to fight. Polands population is only half that of Turkeys, yet already its two biggest cities, Warsaw and Krakow, have taken in about a million Ukrainians combined. But the strain is starting to show: on the weekend, Warsaws mayor said the city had absorbed as many Ukrainians as it could and the need for an international relocation system had become urgent.

It seems contradictory, given all the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders of the past two years, but perhaps its fitting that this pandemic era is also an age of exile. Never before in human history have so many people been displaced from their homes, more than 85 million, according to the UN refugee agency, or more than 1 per cent of humanity.

For many Europeans this wave might recall the vast displacement of the Second World War, which highlights another historical tie between Poles and Ukrainians. After the war, tens of thousands of both refused to return to their home countries, which had become part of the USSR. In early 1946, western powers united to create a refugee organisation meant to assist those with legitimate fears of persecution that body later became the UN refugee agency.

Beyond my concern for the Ukrainians who were so recently my friends and neighbours in Kyiv, for me this refugee wave has me thinking of Turkey, where I lived as the number of arriving Syrians ticked into the millions. Many viewed Ankaras open-door policy as an extension of then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogans opposition to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and an attempt to gain regional popularity as the champion of oppressed Muslims.

Whatever its reasoning, Turkey was widely and rightly lauded for its generosity. But today, a decade on from the first Syrian arrivals, Turkish citizens facing high unemployment and rampant inflation have tired of their refugee guests, who are seen as taking too many jobs.

Opposition parties have vowed to return all the Syrians and Afghans home should they come to power after next years elections, and have of late been out-polling Mr Erdogans long-ruling AKP party. This, sometimes, is the cost of doing good. Its now Europes turn, once again, to bear that burden.

Published: March 14, 2022, 4:00 PM

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Europes refugee burden is looming and Poland has set an example - The National

The first hope when this article is written is that health, people and economy have returned to the normal situation in every corner of the world, or at least that positive trends exist to reach it.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has brought suddenly a lot of changes. The teleworking, telecommuting or working from home has been accelerated and implemented by necessity: to work remotely now in a lot of sectors, such as Information Technology (IT), is a must and not an option.

Focusing on IT, it can be read in a lot of places headlines announcing, or claiming, that the productivity of IT companies or IT departments has been increased (due to this remote working) or that at least this productivity has not decreased. Regarding this productivity concept, from the metrics point of view, it is interesting to recall that for managing the productivity we need to know the size of the work done, and the effort needed to do that.

We can say that the tasks have been accomplished on time, or that the effort spent in a concrete activity has been according to the planned effort, but standard productivity is something different. An interesting detail is that it is essential to have a high-precision recording of the effort because when working from home the effort can be more volatile and difficult to measure with precision.

IT strategic standard metrics in this virtual time (physically speaking) are essential for creating strong trust, transparence and sincerity between clients and IT providers, sharing clear and understandable metrics by all the parties, without any kind of cooking the books. For avoiding creating ad-hoc indicators and KPIs to project level, application level or even to company level, the eyes might be put in the highest-level perspective, applying worldwide standard metrics and indicators that bypass applications, companies and countries.

Recalling the IT software productivity, nothing can be measured without the size (so in enhancements as in creating IT products), and at this point IFPUG, like a lighthouse, brings light with its three worldwide methods: 1) IFPUG Functional Size, the ISO/IEC 20926 standard and even father and inspirator of other methods, 2) SiFP (Simple Function Points), and 3) SNAP (Software Non-Functional Assessment Process) method, the standard IEEE 2430-2019 that measures the Non Functional requirements.

COVID-19 is synonymous to a big-bang economic crisis, in spite that the most important are the health consequences. In just a few weeks a lot of things have changed: unemployment, sales drop, loss of benefits and crisis are words too common. A lot of things have collapsed like a house of cards.

We can say that the less affected are the essential ones or the best ones. But how essential or good is a company? What add value does the company or its products provide? Metrics, trends, analysis and projections are essential and companies might take advantage of those analysis.

It can be said that a first group of companies consider IT metrics as something essential and taken into consideration to base decisions on for years. For this group, metrics are a must and are essential to take strategic decisions to Cs levels, in addition to other levels. They provide a long past historical perspective that help to anticipate future trends, a kind of what if?, or even what happened when we did a set of actions in the past?

Those companies have a set of golden information to multiple levels, starting from the drivers that can affect positively or negatively the productivity, the quality and the time-to-market, amongst others. To know, for example, how competitive is a company versus the competitors, or even what can happen if enter into scene a set of scenarios. Those metrics will bypass projects, technologies and companies.

A company can focus mainly in financial metrics, without putting too much focus in having deeper indicators such as why the company has good results? or which ones are the drivers that have contributed in the previous years, and now, in the economic success? or in what position is the company versus competitors or versus standards? Even, in the case of having excellent economic results, if the productivity is low, if the product quality is just normal and if the product cost (for example due to dinosauric company costs or to a high non-productive pyramid, all of this combined with a low productivity) is high, then actions might be taken.

The objective is not only to have strategic info but that this info is sincere, without any kind of cooking the books or fabrication. Multi-axis info and with multiple objectives might be managed, such as if the company or IT provider has an excellent ratio productivity vs quality vs time-to-market vs costs vs value vs service spirit. If all of this is accomplished, if the company has a good vision, mission and common sense, and if the product is innovative then it can be offered the best valued product.

A second group of companies or IT departments implement metrics programs, but perhaps more focused in just having metrics or fulfilling requirements (such as to be able to affirm that Productivity metrics, for example, are managed) or certifications (such as we fulfill the Measurements and Analysis CMMI process area) than in providing strategic information and taking advantage of them. Metrics will exist but sometimes can be more focused on having good numbers than on ensuring the numbers are the real ones. Something like if you publish a picture from yourself in Instagram but to publish it, you have taken previously 100 pictures, you have selected the best one from those 100 pictures and even you have applied some magic touch of Photoshop to the selected one. This picture is yours? Yes. This picture refers to your real you? Perhaps not.

Facts such as to penalize projects or teams with bad indicators but with honest numbers that give credibility to the metrics, and in the opposite way to reward projects with perfect metrics results but adding non-nice practices such the mentioned above (select the best picture and to apply Photoshop-to-the numbers techniques) are indicators to non-mature companies because you will not have the real numbers, the real reasons and the real conclusions.

Obviously a third group exists. It considers that to manage metrics, to know them and to take advantage of them are just fiction because they have the perception (feelings more than numbers) that they are the best ones. During crisis times, they can recall the idea of not having strategic, and recorded, info was not a good idea. Implementing metrics plans is something that takes time: not only to implement the plan but to have historical info and metrics objectives, historical changes, revisions and corrections. Even, not having those dozens of What if? and Why? questions answered in numbers for years is not a good idea, too. These companies can be a little bit like a great ship on the high seas, in the middle of the storm, without an engine, and carried by the high waves.

To be in the first group might be something essential. To know the competitivity using standard metrics might not be considered as an option, but as a must. In these changing times, and always, it is needed to bring the best high value to customer and to companies.

Metrics and metrics areas or departments might not be considered as a cost but as an investment: strategic activity that provides golden-key information and provides guidance to companies and to its Cs levels. If providing this guidance is important in sunny days, it is even more important in the night or in dark times, perhaps synonymous to the actual time. The IFPUG standard worldwide methods that permit to manage strategic metricsand to compare indicators and trends with internal and external worldwide indicatorsare essential and might be a lighthouse to help IT projects, IT products and companies to arrive correctly and safely to the port. In just a few months a lot of things have changed.

Published in MetricViews IFPUG.

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Has Software Productivity Increased or Decreased During COVID-19? - Finextra