Many thanks to FM for finding the link. Back in the "debate" with Steve Heller, the Cap Gemini survey was discussed in some detail. Many reporting the results have used the term "Mission-Critical", as in reporting the latest results as "less than 50% of organizations plan to have Mission Critical systems ready". Steve used these headlines to question some of the assumptions I made. Well, the actual survey questions are at: http://www.hrubin.com/download/y2k2q98.zip This is a zip file, containing a Word document with the actual questions. It can be found on Howard Rubin's site: http://www.hrubin.com/survey/index.html To answer the question, the term "mission critical" does not appear anywhere in the survey. The term "critical" shows up twice, neither of which in questions regarding percentage of systems complete. The relevant question is: COMPLIANCE AND TESTING
What percent of all systems will be compliant and tested by 1/1/99? ________
What percent of systems do not need to be compliant by Year 2000 ________
Of those that should be compliant, what percent of your systems will not be compliant by Year 2000? ________


-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), August 27, 1999

Answers

Well, try again...

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Many thanks to FM for finding the link.

Back in the "debate" with Steve Heller, the Cap Gemini survey was discussed in some detail.

Many reporting the results have used the term "Mission-Critical", as in reporting the latest results as "less than 50% of organizations plan to have Mission Critical systems ready".

Steve used these headlines to question some of the assumptions I made.

Well, the actual survey questions are at:

http://www.hrubin.co m/download/y2k2q98.zip

This is a zip file, containing a Word document with the actual questions. It can be found on Howard Rubin's site:

http://www.hrubin.com/s urvey/index.html

To answer the question, the term "mission critical" does not appear anywhere in the survey.

The term "critical" shows up twice, neither of which in questions regarding percentage of systems complete.

The relevant question is:

COMPLIANCE AND TESTING
What percent of all systems will be compliant and tested by 1/1/99? ________
What percent of systems do not need to be compliant by Year 2000 ________
Of those that should be compliant, what percent of your systems will not be compliant by Year 2000? ________


-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), August 27, 1999.

FM,

An article about the Cap Gemini America survey was posted on this thread earlier in the month...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001DZz

...but having the link to what Cap Gemini America itself has to say about this is important. Hoffmeister had suggested that this survey was talking about compliance of all of a firm's systems and not just critical ones. But the link you provided to Cap Gemini America's site does use the phrase "critical systems":

http://www.usa.capgemini.com/news/pr99.asp?id=104

If the use of the phrase "critical systems" was an error, Cap Gemini has not bothered changing it in the two weeks or so since this was released.

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), August 26, 1999.

-- a (a@a.a), August 27, 1999.

'a', if you read the Debate thread, I linked to a number of previous Cap Gemini statements, on the previous results. Some use the term "critical", sone do not.

My "guess" is they use it as a descriptive term of software systems in general, and not to denote specific systems.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), August 27, 1999.

Hoff, did you know:

Nero fiddled while Rome BURNED !!

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), August 27, 1999.

Really Ray?

By the way, did YOU know:

You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish?

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), August 27, 1999.

You can lead a Hoff to water, but your can't make him store it.

-- a (a@a.a), August 27, 1999.

Or as Deckers wise old Grandfather used to say, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friends nose.

-- No Way (yeah@right.uhuh), August 27, 1999.

No Way

As my grandfather used to say, "you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't wipe your friends on the couch."

-- enough is (enough@enough.com), August 27, 1999.

You can lead Hoff to y2k but you can't make him think.

-- oh boy (ima@home.lol), August 27, 1999.

Hmm, I keep wanting to take a "fond farewell" of this forum, at least as a poster, and I keep getting sucked back into the morass of this blasted Cap Gemini America survey.

As I noted in a thread on this subject a day or two ago, the August 10th PR (Press Release) Newswire bit used the term "mission-critical"; you would think that Cap Gemini America would have its own press release correct, yes? (I'm still trying to find this PR Newswire release again; it was definitely dated August 10th.) Then there's the "Newsbytes" article just two days later, on August 12th, quoting Dr. Howard Rubin, the fellow who actually prepared the report, as saying that "the most critical of the critical systems are done." The overall context is clearly "critical" systems as a whole; indeed, the rest of the news article gives the detailed statistical breakdowns (percentage completions, etc.) for these critical systems. See http://currents.net/newstoday/99/08/12/news1.html

That brings us to the survey questions noted by Hoffmeister above. Now, I can't seem to unzip this file, so unless somebody is kind enough to unzip it and email it to me I can't look at the survey questions myself. But I will focus on a few questions that Hoffmeister has posted directly from that survey. One survey question asked, "What percentage of systems do not need to be compliant by Year 2000?" This question seems designed to separate the "critical" from the "noncritical" systems, since the general understanding is that "noncritical" systems are systems that you can (supposedly) still do business without and so they "do not need to be compliant" by 1/1/2000. OK. Then the next survey question, as posted by Hoffmeister, is, "Of those that should be compliant, what percentage of your systems will not be compliant by Year 2000?" This question is evidently asking what percentage of critical systems (i.e., those that should be compliant) will indeed be compliant by 1/1/2000. The noncritical systems had been "weeded out" by the preceding question.

I grant that these survey questions leave something to be desired, especially if there was not additional explanation/instruction given to corporate respondents at the time of the survey. (There doesn't seem to be any way of knowing if additional instruction was given, of course, unless somebody here knows Dr. Rubin personally and wants to ask him!) Also, "need be," rather than "should be," should have been used in that second question analyzed above. Nevertheless, the basic gist was probably understood by most respondents: which systems do you actually need, and what percentage of those systems do you expect will be ready in time? Dr. Rubin has impressive credentials, and he and Cap Gemini America (no slouch of an outfit) seem confident in reporting this survey as a picture of the "mission-critical" readiness of the Fortune 500.

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), August 27, 1999.

A good rule of thumb in intepreting suvey responses is to see what questions were actually in the survey. Press releases and sound bites don't always give you the questions those RESPONDING were actually answering...

Regards,

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), August 27, 1999.

Actually, Don, the Newsbytes article you quote is here:

http://curren ts.net/newstoday/99/08/12/news1.html

And the lead paragraph is:

Fewer than half of US Fortune 500 companies expect all of their computer systems to be ready for Year 2000-related failures, in part because they are devoting much of their attention to ensuring that their top "mission-critical" systems are Y2K-compliant, a new survey has found.

Combined with the fact the actual survey questions make no mention of "mission critical", or even "critical", it seems pretty evident the survey is not saying less than half will have all their "mission critical" systems done.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), August 27, 1999.

Thanks for the hot link, Hoffmeister, though the URL I provided was also correct, of course.

Please read the entire article carefully, Hoffmeister. Note the statistical break downs, and pay particular attention to what Rubin says, too. Since he authored the report, I presume he understands what is in it. And recall what Cap Gemini America said in its own press release on August 10th. "Factfinder's" point aside, I don't see any reason why Cap Gemini America would want to get its own press release wrong, do you? That could turn out to be rather embarrassing, after all.

Regarding the survey questions, my points made above still stand, I think. Most respondents should have understood what was meant by the second question. Cap Gemini America was asking them how well they were doing on the systems they actually needed (i.e, that "should be" compliant) for their business. For most folks, that's also the basic definition of "mission-critical" or "critical."

Of course, we can play these semantic games all night; hey, I have a doctorate in English from the U. of Illinois, was thoroughly trained in deconstruction and other post-structuralist theories, and can make even our beloved president look like a duffer at such matters!

Joking aside, I admit (again) that the survey questions could have been worded better; nonetheless, I'll wager that the basic sense of the questions was clear enough to most respondents. That's probably why Cap Gemini America considered this an assessment of Fortune 500 progress on critical systems.

I appreciate your posting some of the actual survey questions, Hoffmeister.

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), August 28, 1999.