Operation Improvement Inc.

In every field of endeavor today, the need for continuous learning and self-improvement never ends.

“Hybrid” skills – knowledge that spans traditional HR silos and categories have always created opportunities for me. So, I always take the opportunity to expand in new directions.

After my own business requirements led to dabbling in Amazon Web Services for email delivery, cloud desktop services and small cloud web servers, I decided to try the AWS certification tests, starting with what they call the “Cloud Practitioner”.

The certification programs also most certainly bring Amazon more business. For example, I quickly learned that the domain registration and name server services at Amazon were quite superior to the service I had used for years – and I have already begun the migration of the first four of many domain names to Amazon’s Route 53 service.

Next up for me is the Amazon Architect program. Fortunately, there are many hours of free preparation materials available at the Amazon web site. There is also much that can be learned from sample tests that are offered by third party training organizations. These free tests are an enticement to sample their website and consider their fee for training programs.

Here are some tips for others who may want to explore Amazon AWS services and certifications.

• Think big. Really REALLY big!

On the one hand, AWS has services for small organizations and their “only pay for what you use” pricing lets almost anyone experiment with web servers, cloud telephony, email, cloud data storage and more for tens of dollars per month and not thousands.

On the other hand, consider what would be involved in configuring and launching thousands of servers in dozens of data centers – while sharing and securing data between these centers and millions of end users. No “on premises” data center experience prepares you for the scale, the “wholesale” mindset you must develop to effectively use AWS for substantial workloads.

• Don’t Panic!

AWS services are modular and are intended to be loosely connected to produce a resilient and highly available result that can be evolved in small iterations to continuously improve. However, you must first break the “code” of AWS naming conventions.

If you have programmed, you may be familiar with concepts such as “objects”, “structured code”, “event driven routines” and more. When you pick up a new programming language these elements and common built-in functions are typically available if you can “google” the new language terminology for the familiar code building blocks. (Do arrays start at zero or one? Does this language use Braces or brackets? Indented structure blocks of reserved words. Etc.)

AWS often makes creative names for functions and services that you must work to match up conceptually with functions you may have encountered before. On top of this new nomenclature, AWS condenses these names to acronyms, and one must remember and retain the difference between SES, SNS, SQS or ELB, ALB, NLB – and so on.  When you expand the acronym and “translate” the service name you often find something familiar.

Of course, there is much you will find that is new and much that is arcane. Overall, you will find the AWS view of “good architecture” is logical, secure, and labor and time saving if used properly. Ask yourself, “if I were designing AWS itself – how would I do it?”

• AWS is always changing.

The “free” sample tests and training videos on the web are not 100% accurate in their scoring. One test heavily emphasized the “access control list” for security, while AWS now prefers resource policies unless ACLs are the only option. Another list marked an answer wrong claiming AWS did not support a particular option or feature – but that was “old news”. New features often change the way cloud applications are designed and deployed.

Supporting the Dependency Diagram With Visual Definitions

Common Error and Solution for Performance Charts

Some years ago, I saw a clever poster that diagrammed systems of the human body. It was the most complex flow diagram with dozens of boxes and lines representing the interaction of electrical and chemical activity and their effects on the whole.

This diagram was presented as a “wholistic systems” view of human anatomy, but it was mind-stopping in its complexity. Such an analysis might be appropriate as input for a computer simulation, but it did not conceptualize anatomy and biological process in a form that was suitable to learn, teach and share knowledge.

I have seen this same kind of complexity in business. I have seen telephone routing protocols that make it impossible for a human being to predict where calls will be delivered, who will be overloaded and who will be left idle.  I have seen workflows in service and manufacturing operations with a multitude of steps, loops and IF-THEN-ELSE forks in the road that would leave workers uncertain how to proceed.

From cross-discipline experience in many different work environments we derived a different method of describing work that is suited to learn, share, teach and improve business processes.

You know that humans need conceptual structure. Sentences can’t run too long. Articles benefit from paragraphs. Social Security numbers and phone numbers are hyphenated so that they can be remembered as three things instead of 10.

For example, we think of the first three digits of a phone number as an area code. Applying a conceptual structure, grouping, and naming things of like kind is what empowers human thought and decision-making.

Did you ever try to assemble a jigsaw puzzle as a child? The first step was always to group. Pieces of a certain color were pulled aside and in our mind we said “sky”, or “grass”, “people”. Our process dependency diagrams are approached the same way.

At a high level, we group the inputs, outcomes (nouns) and process steps (verbs) into a mentally manageable number that can be presented on a single page. This “umbrella” process diagram shows the overall dependencies for a successful outcome. Each earlier process step is usually earlier in time, but it is definitely a prerequisite for success.

Each process step is broken down onto a detail sheet and more details about the inputs and outputs emerge as well. A process guidebook organized in this way makes it easy to access the level of detail that the user needs for their level of experience.

Decisions are handled by referencing what we call factor tables. We either know in advance the decisions that will be made in a process or not. If not, the work is “out of process” and needs to be reviewed at a higher level; a supervisor, manager, or engineer – depending on the operation. This feedback is a crucial part of the improvement process.

The result: ideas about work and results are presented in a linear, easy to understand format without loops and branches. We describe work conceptually, and not in the fashion a computer requires.