September, 2008
by Tom Kelman
Peg McMahon won a Mullen award in 2007 for her outstanding paper, "Death To Dashboards: Alarming, Performance Management Based on Variance, System Prioritization and Other Thoughts on Data Visualization." In her paper Peg discusses how the use of traditional thresholds and dashboard displays needs to be reviewed in this day of large server farms and endless streams of metrics. In their place she presents the idea of using threshold ranges determined statistically and treemap displays to analyze the results. This is Peg's third paper written for CMG. She is also the president of the Kansas City regional.
MeasureIT: Tell us something about your work for CMG and how you got started.
Peg McMahon: I began my career in Capacity Management in the year 2000. Our company was new at the time, and we were inventing our jobs as we did them. But with a little research, I found that I had entered into hallowed halls - in the sense that there was a mature discipline complete with a body of hard-won knowledge. Fortunately, Kansas City had an established region, and I was able to start attending meetings.
MI: What is your day job?
PM: I am a full-time capacity manager. Our joke is that there are two ways to get more capacity: buy more or use less. The "Buy More" side focuses on forecasting, modeling, workloads, business drivers, business relationships, and projects. The "Use Less" side focuses on performance improvement and architecture. I work both sides of the capacity equation in that I specialize both in modeling and in performance management. I probably spend more time tuning than modeling, though.
MI: How did you get inspired to write your award-winning paper?
PM: Honestly," inspiration" is kind of a big word to use for the process I went through. Over the years I have learned that the most important things to discuss are the simple assumptions underlying our work. Take a good look at the things everyone knows and no one talks about. Chances are that there is a good paper in there somewhere. Plus, the paper gave me a chance to vent about one of my pet peeves. Apparently I get my aerobic exercise jumping on and off of soap boxes.
MI: What were some of your biggest challenges in putting it together?
PM: Meeting the deadline. Putting the paper into acceptable format. Believing that I had something of value to say.
MI: What was the greatest satisfaction to you about getting this paper accepted and recognized?
PM: You have to be a certain age to remember Sally Field's acceptance speech at the Oscar's, but, if you do, you know what I am going to say. Honestly, it is very reassuring to know that what you have to say makes sense to people - and that it resonates with their own personal experience. And I must confess that I enjoy presenting to an audience. It's great when I tell a joke, and, one, they realize that it is in fact a joke, and, two, they laugh. Usually, when I talk to "real" people about what I do, they roll their eyes and back away.
MI: What are you working on for this year?
PM: This year, frankly, galloped by. I guess I will just have to focus on preparing something for next year's conference.
MI: What would you like to tell an aspiring writer about how to be successful at CMG?
PM: Use short sentences. Write short paragraphs. It takes a lot of thought to be able to put complex ideas into simple sentences. And speaking of simple, don't be afraid to write a paper on a beginner level. You might be surprised at the positive response you get. People are eager to hear the simple truth.
MI: Over the years, what has CMG meant to you? How has it affected your career?
PM: CMG let me know that I was not alone. It introduced me to the discipline of capacity management and exposed me to both best practices and creative thought. It refined my thinking and challenged my assumptions. It has allowed me to meet many fine people that I am honored to know. The conferences are educational and thought provoking. Listening to one of Bernie Domanski's talks keeps me laughing for days. All around, it doesn't get much better than this.
MI: Where would you like to see CMG go in the future?
PM: Well, before I came to Capacity Management, I was a specialist in Disaster Recovery (aka Contingency Planning, aka Continuity Planning). One of the major conferences in that discipline is put on by DRI (the organization formerly known as Disaster Recovery Institute). One of the reasons that the DRI conference always draws an audience is that DRI offers nationally recognized certification in Contingency Planning. Attendees come to the conference either for continuing education credits or for a chance to take the certification test. I think the DRI model may be a worthwhile one for CMG to consider.
MI: What would you be willing to tell us about your family and personal life?
PM: First - the great news is that I in fact DO have a life. Sometimes it is easy to make your profession into the center of your world. Second - and this should be very reassuring to the increasing portion of the population that is younger than I am - I am happier now than I have ever been. There are gains as well as losses in the aging process. Third, I give complete credit to my Higher Power and to the wildly wonderful people in my life. This is one area, though, where I will NOT get on a soap box. If you want to know more, just ask.
MI: What is the most interesting thing about you that most of us don't know!
PM: For almost 15 years I have played ancient music with a talented group of living room musicians. The group includes recorder players and sometimes as many as three harpists. I am the impaired guitar player, trying hard to play softly enough so the harps can be heard. The music we play is well within the reach of the average musician and is a lot of fun. We figure that in three or four hundred years or so the bad tunes tend to die out. At session, our leader projects the sheet music on to the living room wall using an overhead projector. So we truly play off-the-wall music.
MI: Who inspired you?
PM: Grace Murray Hopper. She is my IT hero. I have her framed picture in my cube. It's the 1986 cover of the Navy periodical "Chips Ahoy" along with her famous quote: "It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." And for years - until it went to clock heaven - I had a clock that ran backwards. I called it the Grace Murray Hopper Memorial Clock. And, truthfully, when listing major influences on my thinking, I mustn't omit Alice in Wonderland. I can't deny it even if I try with both hands.
"In pioneer days they used oxen for heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn't budge a log, they didn't try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn't be trying for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers." Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
"Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise." Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
"We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question." Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
"You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington." Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper