Rambles In The Brambles

As I reflect upon my personal and professional life, there are many proud accomplishments. I can point to the cultivation of an ethical character, the evolution of relationships with friends and family, the purchase of my home, the running of marathons, and the development of interesting concepts within the scientific realm. But I am particularly proud of my work at Honeywell Aerospace on the NexSys project: A software tool designed to enhance the productivity of engineers.

As a world-class engineering firm, we had over sixty years of analysis tools, for applications from commercial airliners to space stations to army tanks. But most of those software programs were written in old and difficult to maintain languages, and none had graphical user interfaces. Due to the cycles of the aerospace industry, many experienced engineers were close to retirement, leaving recently-graduated workers without the benefits of prior lessons.

The problem was easy to identify but difficult to solve. Along with several other engineers, I put together a proposal to our management: We would develop a modern framework (called NexSys) which would allow disparate computer-aided-engineering tools to communicate, and, within that framework, set up user interfaces appropriate for a generation trained on Microsoft Windows. We could rate our progress by observing productivity gains, acceptance within the organization, and quality of results.

We knew at the outset that it would take a time. Our organization did not have many programmers familiar with modern languages and methodologies. My role at the beginning was to learn and use the new programming techniques, and tailor them for Honeywell's problems. We also sought to increase our knowledge by engaging professional consultants and Computer Science students from local colleges. There was some resistance to incorporation of the standard framework, as it meant that familiar user-interfaces had to change. All in all, the development and roll-out of NexSys has taken even longer than we had anticipated.

But, after about three years of development, we have been able to show measurable success. Our tools are particularly useful during the early proposal stages of engineering, when time is critical. One project showed a time savings of over 50% (about 100 man-hours of analysis time rather than 200 man-hours on a similar project), and other projects showed similar results. This translated into increased responsiveness to our customers, and reductions in cost.

Another indication of the success of the program has been its adoption by organizations outside the development team. Within the last year, NexSys has been utilized by engineering groups in England, with similar productivity results. It has also improved communication between the geographically-dispersed groups, and allowed best-practices to be shared. My role as the team leader has been to educate, manage feature sets, and provide connections to experts on both sides of the ocean.

Beyond the benefits to Honeywell, this project has furthered my development. From the project beginning, I have learned much about modern software development practices. As I have transitioned into the leadership role, I have also learned the principles of project management and how to cultivate a skillful team.

The success of the NexSys project has been a source of pride. Over the course of three years, I have found clever solutions to intractable problems and developed useful skills for the future. It is my hope that many similar accomplishments await.