Dan Ryan edited Problems.tex  about 10 years ago

Commit id: 69f1a772afe32c4b40eb8413094679ce36bb225e

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Imagine you are given an assignment: list five things that you have seen in your job at a small liberal arts college that fit the categories "annoying," "frustrating," "waste of time," "inefficient," "poor quality product." How long would it take you to get to five? I got to six before I even noticed I had gone over the limit.  \begin{enumerate}  \item Backlash Firestorms When Solution Developed by Small Group is Made Public  \begin{quote}  Where does this text go when I put it under a bullet?  \end{quote}  \item Email Cascades Among Committee Members  \item Mysterious Data Analyses Breed Distrust  \item Administrative Reports/Analyses that Would Not Stand Up to Normal Scholarly Standards  \item Logistics of Collaboration are Roadblock to Better Results  \item Lack of Documentation Standards leads to Community Information Base Pathologies  \end{enumerate} \subsubsection{Backlash Firestorms When Solution Developed by Small Group is Made Public}  \subsubsection{Email Cascades Among Committee Members}  \subsubsection{Mysterious Data Analyses Breed Distrust}  \subsubsection{Administrative Reports/Analyses that Would Not Stand Up to Normal Scholarly Standards}  \subsubsection{Logistics of Collaboration are Roadblock to Better Results}  An observant wit once noted that "collaboration is an unnatural act." Beyond possibly being unnatural, it is definitely not "free," that is, successful collaboration may produce the net benefit of a better solution, but there is an energy obstacle to get over to reach this favorable state. This energy hump usually thwarts good collaboration and results in either inferior products, expensive processes, or both.  \subsubsection{Lack of Documentation Standards leads to Community Information Base Pathologies}  How many times have you received an announcement or proposal of a new policy or a report from some administrative office with no date, no indication of who the author is or under whose authority the document has been distributed? How often do you get attachments with file names like "report.docx"? How often can no one find any copy of the minutes of a meeting from last semester? How often do we produce documents that incorrectly incorporate something from faculty handbooks or course catalog? How many different ways is "advanced seminar" abbreviated in our databases?