Brief History

Section 6 - Cybernetics Consultancy

These small- and medium-scale projects were initiated by clients, who, like NMPC, contracted with PANGARO Incorporated on the basis of its unique capabilities in applied cybernetics.

Du Pont

In 1987 Pangaro was approached by one of the planning departments of Du Pont to consider what aspects of cybernetics could be brought to bear in the corporate environment. The consulting relationship is on-going and has included:

• Modeling of the Du Pont corporation as a series of snapshots in time, with the purpose of understanding the real dynamics, as opposed to the stated purposes, of the organization. In addition to enhancing Du Pont's own self-understanding, the exercise has also revealed areas where changes in the environment have not been matched by changes within the organization. Formalism used is briefly described in this text
• Informing Du Pont of the recent developments in the field of cybernetics and how they may be used to understand and affect Du Pont's own evolution, including organizational modeling (mentioned above and described further below) and presentations of applications of cybernetics to Du Pont's history and interests
• Developing detailed presentations (whether in written, live seminar or multi-media formats) based on analyses of the direction of social, economic and technological factors that are transforming the nature of the modern corporation, and their relationship to the history and goals of the entire Du Pont organization
• Early-stage planning for the transformation of the corporation to a new form.

Overview of the current directions of consulting work shows the interelations of various projects.

Xerox Corporation

In 1994 Xerox Corporation established a new team aimed at the goal of managing corporate knowledge as a strategic asset. The initial mission was to identify, develop and disseminate best practices in software engineering, including but not limited to Object Technology, throughout Xerox. In 1995 the scope of responsibility expanded greatly and now includes "end-to-end" deployment of information technology, from strategy and design to full world-wide integration. The team was renamed Global Strategy & Advanced Technology (GS&AT).

Central to GS&AT's vision for knowledge management is a unifying information architecture. This architecture invests in a middle layer of services in preference to application code on the desktop. These services are responsible for the entire lifecycle of all corporate knowledge. Business trends such as workflow, enterprise modeling and business process reëngineering (BPR) are subsumed under this approach. Maintenance of all corporate knowledge, via the object models that contain it, is primary; software (forward-engineered, and auto-generated from the models when possible) flows from it. The knowledge asset is managed directly, and the creation of future "legacy" systems is minimized.

Parallel to the architecture is a set of practices for each aspect of its implementation, including discovery of objects, their analysis and design, delineation of roles and responsibilities, rules for collaboration, management of projects, the structure of incremental development and deployment, simulation, and metrics. In a full-time engagement from January through August of 1995, Paul Pangaro was responsible for overseeing and co-creating the development of these methodologies, as well as the incorporation of World Wide Web technology.

NAVY Skills Enhancement Program

PANGARO Incorporated was involved in an innovative approach to Navy training under the Skills Enhancement Program. Within the constraint that all software run in Navy-standard personal computers, the project had the ambitious goal of proving that computer-based training could replace classroom training for a notoriously difficult subject for trainees to master, that of basic electronics.

Having adopted an approach of an "adventure game" format in order to create motivation, the Navy perceived a need for remedial training in addition to the training provided within the game itself. PANGARO Incorporated was contacted and proposed THOUGHTSTICKER, which was accepted by the Navy as the best candidate. Because of the unique flexibility of the THOUGHTSTICKER user interface, remedial training could be under the complete control of the trainee, whether initiated manually by the trainee, or automatically by the system should the trainee not achieve mastery while playing the game. According to proprietary designs provided by PANGARO Incorporated and as implemented by the prime contractor to the Navy, the training delivery portions of THOUGHTSTICKER were written for MS-DOS in the C++ programming language. Based on training materials prepared by electronics experts, data files were also created by PANGARO Incorporated for THOUGHTSTICKER to adaptively select training presentations, based on the individual conceptual style of the trainee as measured by THOUGHTSTICKER.

Evaluations of the completed system by NPRDC in San Diego did prove the strong viability of this approach to electronics training, as well as its advantages over conventional classroom training.

Lotus Development

PANGARO Incorporated was engaged by Lotus to examine the perceptions and realities in "workflow" products from the standpoint of the evolution of the modern, "re-invented" corporation. This relationship over the course of 1994 included a comparative, quantitative analysis of products, a critique of workflow methodologies, and development of an enterprise-wide workflow strategy.

NYNEX

An advanced media research group, part of NYNEX Science and Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is considering the impact of sophisticated networks in a wide variety of commercial and consu-mer settings. PANGARO Incorporated was engaged to apply cybernetic analyses to aid the definition of new telecommunication possibilities for operator services, education and training.

Pacific Bell

PANGARO Incorporated was approached by Pacific Telephone to consider whether Conversation Theory could apply to the software development cycle, where participants include users, software designers, implementors, and managers. Such an application of Conversation Theory, along with design for a group planning tool that could be implemented as a software product (the Organizational Modeling tool described below), was presented.

Leading Edge Products

While in the course of producing their first major software product, a word processing system of great capability for its time, Leading Edge considered the possibilities for "embedded training." Such an approach, far more powerful and useful than "on-line" or "context-sensitive" help, required a technology like THOUGHTSTICKER. PANGARO Incorporated provided a live demonstration in MS-DOS of the viability of such an implementation.

Johnson Controls

PANGARO Incorporated was commissioned to present a cybernetic analysis of their approach to "intelligent building systems" that integrated energy, security and fire monitoring, as well as expert systems for efficient management of energy use.

A T & T

In the era just before divestiture, a research group was considering avenues for the production of an "electronic Yellow Pages." PANGARO Incorporated produced a report that analyzed and specified the workflow of such a vast production problem, from hardware/software capabilities to production eco-nomics to staffing requirements.