Nimrod2025 / Vision 22

You will see from this narrative that I have a number of outstanding issues with my professional life that I would like to be put to bed.

I am calling on my Brother in Law Paul and my good friend Richard to help me progress ideas that we could one day put into  package solutions and market as the definitive solution to HR Processing In the World - I have dabbled with creating Multi-Lingual applications - It is something that I would like to progress.

I invested £800 in a widows machine to do SQL Server Applications - It is broken - I do not intend to invest in another machine unless it is built by Paul and is loaded with a development environment ready with a prototype  / Actual projects.

This machine will be called a Stratbox - A home server with applications built on it that we can sell to students of BSG-Elite with a course and code samples worth £1200.

 

In 1987 Mick gave the management team a presentation called Quo Vadiz - The opening slide was a pair of hands holding a crystal ball. When I joined Sodexo the company did a road show called Vision 21 to inforrn you of the future.

Take this document as Vision 22 - it is where i want us to be in three years time. 

We were tasked during Quo Vadiz to increase service levels.

I was ok my service levels ran at 100% 

In 1988 i was given a huge pay rise - I now realise that Mick must have been setting up the service levels for his FM agreement with Hoskyns.  I was devastated leaving Ingersoll Rand but Hoskyns was the making of me.

 

In 1988 I was a Systems Designer at Ingersoll Rand. - I had just received authorisation from a feasibility study to commence a Front End Re-Write of a shop floor control system / payroll interface. This has now evolved into Corporate Cloud Solutioms / Budget Control Systems and Operation Cost Control - Vision 25.

 

I had attempted to introduce PC Systems Development.

Working with Peter King at Peterborough Software we introduced Unistar a time and attendance system which linked to mainframe system using KopyKing as a virtual C drive.

It was fantastically simple - the pc user had total control of the file transfer and the mainframe was a simple job of picking up the file using standard job control. All that we had to do on the design was to ensure that the file was the correct format. 

We thought that we might have problems with the union tacking to the new technology - but they liked it - it was quicker than the old clocks. 

Sadly this was not a turning point for the company - I was advised that I had done a god job and was rewarded for it but i was told in no uncertain terms never to recommend a PC Solution again - We are a mainframe shop said Mick.

It must have came to a great shock to Mick when the department was taken over by Hoskyns. I think that Mick went for the big job in Europe but i seem to think he did not get it - I lost contact with IR in 1989. I know that Trevor got Mick's Job at Horwich. 

 

There had been at least three attempts   to get this project started by systems analysts - for some reason mine was attractive - it was never explained why. Perhaps PC development was expected.

 

The project never got started as the IT Department was dissolved - Ingersoll Rad downsized to AS400 and I was transferred to Hoskyns on a Facilities Management Deal.

Whilst I was contracted to Ingersoll Rand for 5 years I was advised by Hoskyns that I was a wanted man an took up a more senior position. I was informed not to tell Ingersoll Rand Management of my activities - As far as they were concerned I was still managing Business Systems Support / Payroll Statutory Maintenance.

I had great times in Facilities Management with Hoskyns I was wanted for my Management / Team Building Skills.

In 1993 the Manchester Data Centre closed and I was requested to re-locate to Birmingham to manage the Dairy Crest Systems 36 load.  

I elected to stay in Manchester and started my own company - Extra Unit Limited.

I managed to stay employed in the Mainframe Business and was assigned to lead the Y2K project for Sodexo in 1998.

I had been employed as a Systems Designer by Sodexo for their HR and Payroll Solution - Erasmus. The project was riddled with problems we had to extend the team to 4 people bringing in Sandra and Harry - two ICL people with no IBM experience and a trainee called Paulette who had no IT experience.  Harry took over Absence Management - which was never going to work as it had been written using user hooks and we did not have the assembler skills to mod it. It should have been stripped out and re-written as a re-entry process.  Sandra was brought in as an Adminiistrator /'Team Leader - her development skills were limited. 

I was originally Team Leader and was appointed one programmer. I requested David to Assemble and Link Statutory Maintenance - he advised me that he did not know what I meant. I told my manager that I had no time to work with David as we had two releases of the software to do before year end and we have no year end system - I need your best programmer to construct a support systems for David - In the mean tIme I will get my hands dirty.  On reflection it was a bad decision - I should have focused on David but he had his own mentor in Mike who I had no time for. 

My mother had been diagnosed with cancer and had weeks to live - It was a bad time I just had to knuckle down  - with the system failing every  night it was difficult. We had to get the Peterborough Software Consultant in to assist with support. I was shocked when I had found it was Mr X. I had had experience of MR X he had worked at a company that I was requested to implement the tax year end. The solution used User Hooks for some of its tear end reporting. The programs could not be found they had beed delete, I had no option than to deliver UNi2000 as a native product then to do some extracts / reporting - I had to drag in a team to do the work over easter weekend - We were not happy - We did find an E;amil saying won't Hoskyns be happy when they pick up our systems. I can not say of it was from Mr X all I know was that he had constructed the build but had not produced any specifications / test scripts.

I was forced to work alone as Systems Designer Lead Programmer - a position that i was very happy to conduct - It meant short hours - lots of flexitime and plenty of golf as I did the night time support of the operations side of the business. I did get to manage the operations analyst and I got to design the year end system and the test environments. It was happy days as I had been an Operations Analyst at Ingersoll Rand and I liked setting up the schedules.

In 1994 I reported that there were significant design issues with the system and that one day Service Levels would fail.

 

I had produced a report 6 feet high of database errors which went down like a lead balloon - I was not the most popular employee with the management - I had effectively trashed what they had considered to be a successful implementation.    

I was not sanctioned to rewrite the system so I created a support environment - a parallel system so that when the queries came down I could run reports to tell then where the data needed amendment. This was structure code imported from the work which I did at Greater Manchester Police to resolve their backlog.The system needed cross validation removing replacing it with record validation. I created a nice on-line transaction to do it but the user department refused to change the way they operated.

The reality of the situation was that i was operating at a level more senior than my manager - I had total control at Ingersoll Rand to dictate policy for 8 divisions (Horwich, Swan Lane, Hindley Green. Trafford Park, Wythenshawe, Gateshead, Coventry. Darlington plus The Directors Payroll )- sharing the cost of development across budgets. We were a two man band at Ingersoill Rand 

I had total control of Payroll and the interfaces which Trevor looked after General Ledger. We shared  Sales Ledger / Purchase Ledger / Order Processing / Import Export / Parts Pricing / Credit Control  / Job Accounting. Dave Project Managed Accounts Receivable  but I supported him as i had done all the Cobol Report Writing for the project. I also looked after Annual Inventory for all Manchester  sites - This was just a scheduling process over two weeks per year - there was no development it was a management role only.

I respected Steve my manager in many ways - he saw that I had all the skills to work alone / he let me get on with it and left me alone  (I did no reporting to Sandra - I reported to Imran Product Owner - I was my own one man little Agile team.) - systems enhancements came to me - I was requested to implement a NVQ System.  I wanted to develop a full blown training system but was not sanctioned there was only a budget for support and maintenance. Truth be told I had no option than to take what was given to me. I was a UNI2000 Consultant and there were no opportunities in the UK as the Mainframe was effectively dead.

A major regret that I have working with Imran was the NVQ System that we created - I let Imran do all the Business Analysis and I was never convinced that the database which we produced was fully functional - I wanted a sign off by the controlling bodies - Imran was not that pushy - he linked an easy life and I think that times he struggled with concepts - We discussed UniPost / Occupancy / Hayes Tables and TrainIT / Task Management but I could not get him switched on.  I decided not to write a report but to leave it for an employer that might appreciate it one day.

I was invited to join Sodexo by colleagues that I had worked with at Ingersoll Rand - Knight of The Long Knives Lonsdale sacked my team before I had the chance to join them. If Gwyn had been left in charge of the PC Team in 1994 I would have delivered PayIT by 1995 - It would have been KopyKing running virtual PC on the Mainframe linked to UNiSTAR for time recording. Progressed to today TrainIT should be a mobile phone application where the employee maintains their own training record.

 

In1997 Steve came cap in hand to me - Service Levels were by the way side - the on-line systems were not coming up inn the morning. I was asked what I could do about it - I responded that the fix could be applied overnight - I have been running the system in development for 3 years.

When I joined Sodexo there was no documentation / test data. I wrote utilities to strip record out of the Master File during the on-line day into 1 of 10 test systems that. I then created batch test datasets to throw at the system reflect the on-line physical database. This is the way UNI2000 should be designed it is a Batch Environment worth an On-Line Screen Painter - An Excellent Agile development environment. Requests for new functionality could be implemented in minutes if cloning was involved.

Sodexo had one major problem - they were stubborn - They had on file called a Trans Master File which they defined as a temporary file.  The batch processing for the company structure required the creation and write back of the Trans Master. Most night it. would fail. The operations analysts refused to support it and they refused to implement standard restore procedures. They insisted that the Payroll Team be on call to resolve operational issues.  It got tiresome having to go into work to find space for the Trans Master but it did mean i stacked up my flexitime and that i could finish early to play golf. So the job was good to me and i had years of what was simple work.  

My solution was simple - I had created a table for the company structure which i maintained. A Table update took minutes. The schedule to run the company structure was reduced by 7 hours.

The net effect of this change was that more time was now available to take onboard more functionality. The PS2000 Systems for events was scrapped and the PC Team developed a PayIT module with nightly interface. A good  job well done.

By 1997 i was treading water i had resolved the majority of faults that was in the system - i had support off to a tee having changed all the projection job control to procedures control that enabled me to run ten test systems using production schedules.

The overnight systems were no longer failing - My job was done. Two things were outstanding 1, The implementation of UNIPOST - I had created a company cars ERA in the personnel channel - This should have been a Post Channel - Sodexo were contracted to take UNIPOST and were paying for it - but they would not sanction development. As this meant considerable changes to to operations schedule I could not get it past Ted - Sad days, what a waste. 

The second development that i was not sanctioned to implement was a change to the company structure as a Bill Of Material. This would have meant a change to the General Ledger Interface. So this is another outstanding pice of work in my bucket list.

At Greater Manchester Police i looked after the UNI2000 Systems but for come reason GMP did not run the Payroll Channel - They did The Personnel and Post Channel - Post was really interesting it had a file called occupancy which were changes within post.

GMP had a folder 3 inches thick of faults on the system. When analysed the majority was about the reporting of historical data.

 

In 1993 on the Royal Mail Parcel Force project i was introduced to subscripting by Brian Sellars it enabled all the reporting for pay and deduction elements to be produced by one report. A significant saving in development time.  Sodexo had been built without subscripting and the SAR reporting by the Operations Analysts was home for many errors due the manual nature of the job.  Again with Sodexo I wanted to implement changes wit a SAR Key in the header and SubSequencing to replace PAY / Deds Reporting. 

The PS Manual was not great on describing where SubSequencing should be used. It came to me that it is used to drive historical events - and with this Occupancy.

When I experimented the results on Occupancy Report became Crystal Clear. It was clear that Consultant who implemented GMP Systems was not great on History - He had created Court Order Extensions as Single Event Data Codes where they should have been History data to natch the rest of Court Order Processing.

In 1998 I was asked to run the Y2K project for the Mainframe - I was unhappy that i was not Given the PayIT project and the solution that was created was not one that I would have designed. It was clear that I was not flavour of the day. There were senior players at Sodexo who I just did not get on with - I saw then as incompetent and skill less and I did not entertain sharing with them. Whilst at Ingersoll Rand we acted as a team and shared innovation and had a policy of personal development. Implementing Cobol Report Writer for the Accounts Receivable revolutionised our viewpoint on how systems should be developed.

The Year2k project went well -  I was left with no project to work upon.  Erasmus was basically Harry left with Absence Management and Pay Queries because there was no documentation.

The decision was taken by Sodexo to move to SAP and to freeze all development on Mainframe system - The Erasmus Team was cut buy 50% - Leaving  Sandra to Statutory Maintenance / Administration and support with Harry.  These were good people badly managed - not listened to by Senior Management - Who were only interested in ProphIT the PC Solution for the business.

Paulette, bless her had to go - she never really grasped IBM as she was under Sandras wing - She was used as a Payroll Clerk.

There was another two members of the team. Imran who reported to Gary the Personnel Director - I did lots of stuff for him - he invited me to his wedding but I could not go - He would be a good contact now. I did one really interesting transaction for him which is just about the only attempt of me doing graphical processing in Uni2000  i reported a fill stop for every occurrence of a dated event on the employee Master File to demonstrate how much data was being held.

In June 2000 i was made redundant with Paulette but I had befriended Richard Gilbert and Charlie White - Microsoft Developers.

With the support of Richard and Charlie I became a PC developer and obtained my City and Guilds in C Programming.

I have worked with Richard since 2000 and our laster commitment is to Trees.

You can see our latest development Forest 404 here.

A major player in future developments will be Paul Edwards my brother in law.  We go back to 1970's

Last year Paul was released from his contract as a Visual Foxpro Developer after about 20 plus years with one firm.

We looked at a retraining program for Paul with BGS Elite in MVC and C Sharp. 

Paul looked at going to Manchester University to learn Full Stack. I think the cost was about £6,000.

He elected to invest in building a new machine so he bought the bits and with stuff he already had constructed a linux machine and started to look at Laverel. Paul made the decision not to look at MVC / C# but to look at PHP / My SQL. Since the 1980's Paul has been running a home server for his hobby Bosson's Collectables. It was simple to make the decision to convert his system to PHP / My Sql - Which he achieved in no tome at all.

Paul was very fortunate in my mind as he has no degree and Visual Foxpro is obsolete. He found a job  using Power BI.

I al pleased to say that Paul has settled in to his new job and is being given projects to work on where he can use his neew found skills. Paul is now working on a GRN System. He is getting to know his companies systems and has been allowed to develop in Kalipso / PHP My Sql and Visual Foxpro.

With Regards to Pauls Personal Development I will comtinue to press him to b proactive and develop solutions for the family business. I will discuss with him what he is doing at work and advise where I think he can give his company added value.

I will task Paul to stretch himself ad with this i set him a challenge to complete some of the things on my to do list.

I would like Paul to, 

1. Loot at Batch Scheduling

2. TDD running Batch Data into a SQL database

3. Crystal Reporting - Batch scheduling

With regards to database development I would like Paul to :

1 Define how dated events and Occupancy can be programmed in a SQL database.

2 Produce SubSequencing - The reporting of a Data Code Historical Event by Date.

I would like to see Paul.

1, Move Up to SQL Server / MVC / C#  and to work with Ricard - and possibly Charles on Forest Applications.

 

If you have read all my life story you will see that I have more than a few irons in the fire and things to to in my bucket list during my retirement. My thaought have drifted towards Multi-Dimentional / Multilingual Tables - Corporate Cloud Computing.

Wish me well in my drive towards 2025.