On 20 Feb 2007 15:02:57 -0800, "chunky munky"
wrote:

On Feb 20, 10:45 pm, "Richard J." wrote:
chunky munky wrote:
On Feb 20, 6:33 pm, "Peter Smyth" wrote:

Sadly a lot of these projects arent for the benefit of customers or
staff or Duty Managers but for Senior Managers sat in an office
watching their computer, panicking about their performance figures.

This wont help improve the journey to work in the morning, just
massage the stats. Sadly.

So you think that senior managers just sit *watching* computers and
massaging stats? You don't know much about management do you?

Personally I was impressed. I was involved in the late 90s in
collecting and presenting service quality and customer satisfaction
stats to senior management (not LU), and we found that the ability to
take raw figures and put them in front of managers in a clear colourful
standard visual format was extremely effective in identifying key issues
and placing actions during a monthly half-day review of about 300
customers. The automation of that task was essential, but that was done
with non-web-based Excel/PowerPoint/VisualBasic. The stuff in the video
is of course way beyond that. The value to management at all levels
could be enormous.

I was also impressed and look forward to being able to get at that much
easier way of dealing with the data. While aimed more at operational
management the information shown in the demo will be enormously helpful
to a lot of people.

If I have one "moan" it's that I find out about that development via a
link on this group rather than through communication at work.

Yes. I do know for a fact that they do that.

But not simply for the sake of it. I can't think if a senior manager
who has so much time on their hands that they could do that. You seem
to be repeating the age old "head office are a bunch of lazy sods" and
"the front line staff are the only people who do any work" arguments.
Neither of them are correct and we'll never get anywhere if people keep
believing it.

Oh and I'm a day's leave in case you think I'm doing this from the
comfort of my work desk!

Occasionally they go to meetings with the Infraco's to try and improve
things, but as the Infraco's have more money, viz lawyers, they don't
get very far.

The Infraco do not put lawyers into every meeting they have with LU. I
think it also needs to be remembered that LU pay the Infracos so I think
it's LU overall that has more cash and if the tap was turned off you'd
not see the Infracos survive very long.

There has been a great deal done by the Infracos which is good and
plenty of areas where they are lacking. From what I know there is plenty
of pressure and vigour applied to getting the right result out of the
Infracos from all levels in LU.

Very occasionally they also travel out and about on the Railway and
meet customers and staff and find out what is really wrong.

While I don't know what job you do I guess you must be on the
operational side given the above comments. From what I hear every
morning there is a vast knowledge of what has gone on out on the railway
and a hell of a lot of effort is being put in to learning from the
mistakes that *everyone* makes - it's not all one sided. The managers I
know do get out on their bits of the railway and must clearly talk to
the staff - they'd not have the knowledge they have if they didn't.

I certainly don't shut my eyes when I'm out and about on the system.

They work very hard to make the performance figures relate to what the
Mayor wants, indeed TfL are obsessed with them. Sadly this doesn't
always match up to the service that has been provided to customers.

I have to say I am slightly gobsmacked by the above. I do plenty of
reporting - some of which ends in the documents presented to the TfL
Board. I have never once been asked to manipulate or make the numbers
"relate" to anything other than ensuring there is a decent and clear
explanation as to the underlying issues that have driven the numbers to
whatever level they are at.

Don't get me wrong, the software does look very flash.
Just like all the other stuff that the LU IM people have produced.
It's just not too reliable for front line users and have lots of bugs.
Perhaps this new Vista will solve these problems.

In relation to another IM project that I do have an awareness of the
software featured in the demo will form the basis of the new system. The
main issue is that the whole TfL desktop has to be upgraded to support
the software. At long last TfL / LU does seem to be catching up with the
rest of the world in terms of its IT. I have no idea whether Vista will
feature - I doubt TfL would move to what is still a relatively untried
operating environment so early in that product's lifecycle.

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!