On this posting, I am in total agreement with Mike. I think that I have
Doherty's paper in an old issue of the IBM Systems Journal somewhere. By
the way it was Ralph Doherty (and I'm not sure that Doherty is the correct
spelling). I wrote a paper in 1972 while working on my Univ. of Chicago
MBA that was along those same lines. I based it on a class I had at IBM's
SRI in NYC that was, I think, earlier than Doherty's paper. Got an "A" on
the paper and an "A" for the course based on the paper.
Jim
At 03:47 PM 7/27/2006, you wrote:
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Ah, but Sir Alan, you miss the point. I enjoy and support new technology
which improves our lives and makes us more productive (so we can waste
more personal time watching movies and otherwise killing our brain cells).
The IBMLink 2000 implementation was not new technology that improved our
lives or made us more productive -- it appears to be new technology
implemented for the sake of using new technology. It did not offer
anything we could not do before (at least none that this old codger could
readily find), and it actually seems to be less productive. I'm imaging
that Dr. Doherty (IIRC, he wrote "A business case for fir subsecond
response times" sometime back in the 1970's or 1980s) would not be
impressed. He presented a session at SHARE in the 1980s demonstrating the
human performance improvements to be had by consistent screen design. (I
sometimes wonder/fear that such was an argument for the ill-fated Systems
Application Architecture). It was amazing and left a lasting impression.
I tried IBMLink 2000, really making an effort to use it in place of green
screen IBMLink, but grew frustrated by the response times (perhaps
improved since I gave up) and screen design. I used it a few weeks ago
when the 3270 IBMLink application was having problems. I could get stuff
done, it just took longer. Perhaps I should give it another try when I
have some spare time (yeah, right), and a full bottle of Prozac (R) an
Xanax (R). ;-)
Maybe if the designers of IBMLink 2000 came to SHARE and other user
conferences to find out how customers research problems, and download
fixes they would provide a design better fitted to what customers do, and
guide customers to do what IBM can do with the latest whiz-bang gadgets.
Build it (well) and they will come.
Mike Walter
Hewitt Associates
The opinions herein are mine alone (although perhaps shared by others),
and certainly do not represent those of my employer.
Jim Bohnsack
Cornell Univ.
(607) 255-1760
