Bad software crashed Boeings. Now it appears the company lacked a singular software supremo
- Reference: 1604907905
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/09/boeing_veep_of_software/
- Source link:
The Register reports the new job because Boeing’s appointment announcement points out that it previously lacked such a role – and also because the company has admitted that software faults and its failure to address them led to the deaths of 346 people who flew on the 737 Max.
The aerospace outfit says the new role “will focus on further strengthening Boeing's focus on software engineering across the enterprise.”
Who was brave enough to step into this gig? Meet [1]Jinna Dylan Hossein , whose previous roles include veep of software engineering at SpaceX, interim veep of autopilot software at Tesla and director of software engineering at Google.
'Software delivered to Boeing' now blamed for 737 Max warning fiasco [2]READ MORE
Hossein’s LinkedIn profile says he was a founding member of Google’s famed site reliability engineering team and led teams working on Google cloud. At SpaceX he worked on 40 Falcon and 10 Dragon launches and says he was involved in the first successful orbital class booster landing among other feats.
His last gig was at self-driving car company Aurora.
Boeing has big plans for Hossein, [3]announcing that he “will lead a new, centralized organization of engineers who currently support the development and delivery of software embedded in Boeing's products and services. The team will also integrate other functional teams to ensure engineering excellence throughout the product life cycle.”
“Jinnah will be charged with defining and leading Boeing's strategy for software engineering, which includes providing capabilities, technologies, processes and secure and accurate systems to meet the needs of all our customers across the entire product life cycle," said Greg Hyslop, Boeing chief engineer and senior vice president of engineering, test & technology, who added that Hossein will “focus on further strengthening Boeing's focus on software engineering across the enterprise.”
Hossein will report to Hyslop. ®
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[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/jinnahdylan
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/07/boeing_blames_software_737_max_aoa_warning_captions/
[3] https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2020-11-06-Boeing-Appoints-Jinnah-Hosein-to-New-Software-Engineering-Leader-Role#assets_20295_130766-117
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
OK so he's a veep of software development. Will he be allowed to actually do anything or is he there to be fired next time the beancounters screw up.
Still ain't going if it's a Boeing.
Hari Seldon
Revealed that a long, complicated statement of intent from the empire to the foundation essentially said nothing at all.
Safety Engineering
Boeing needs a complete safety team. That means you need not only software people, but safety engineers; there is such a field and it is common in avionics companies that take safety seriously .
Then systems engineers, ITAs (Independent Technical Authorities) who can be Boeing employees but have a veto over something going out of the door (cannot be overridden - the ITA is the ultimate signatory) and various design authorities. The list is quite long for a proper safety organisation.
Unless and until the Boeing attitude changes (so they become engineering focused, not MBA focused) this is simply putting lipstick on a pig.
Agreed.
Once upon a time, Boeing was all about safety. Boeing was the definition of safety. Boeing didn't need a software supremo because everyone had safety in mind.
That lasted until the CEO was no longer an engineer.
Like NASA, the beancounters took over and now here we are. No moon base, and no more redundancy in Boeing planes.
Get the beancounters out of decision roles, stat !
Yes the software was crap, but that wasn't the root of the issue.
The root of the issue was they they fitted the 737 airframe with new engines the cowls of which were basically too large and really mandated a complete redesign of the airframe. However they didn't do that, they moved the engines forward so that they could be moved upwards for the cowls to clear. This lead to the centre of thrust of the engines being in the wrong place. This in turn meant that the plane could (weasel words time) exhibit undesirable flight characteristics. They decided to try to fix these flight characteristics with a cludge in software.
Having a software supremo would have been unlikely to have prevented this situation.
What Boeing were trying to do here was basically fit new more efficient engines to an airframe that wasn't suited to them. They wanted to do this not only to save money in development but also to save their customers money in aircrew training. A whole new plane would not only have cost more to develop and have taken longer to get to market, but it would have meant customers needing to get their aircrews certified on a new plane. However if they could just sell it as a 737 there would be no need for customers to retrain their aircrews which would make the plane more attractive to existing 737 users.
Basically it was Boeing gaming the system to make money.
What the worlds regulators need to do is send a clear message to Boeing and the FAA by refusing to certify the MAX under whatever name Boeing try to relaunch it as a new iteration of the 737 and define it as a new craft requiring re-certification for aircrews.
Hear ye, hear ye. It should be made clear what are the penalties for trying to bypass security with kludges.
Boeing gamed the system because it could
It had people at the FAA to muddy the waters and smooth things over, and it used that advantage to keep the FAA from taking a good look at what was going on.
Yes, Boeing cheated, but IMO the FAA has a large share of responsibility in this matter and nobody is talking about that.
If the FAA had done its job properly, it would never have accepted to just wave the MAX through and would have rightly decided that pilots needed recertification.
The FAA does not exist to save customers money, it exists to save people's lives, and it utterly failed in this instance.
Re: Boeing gamed the system because it could
You are correct.
The FAA allowed Boeing to carry out a lot of it's own certification. The FAA's argument for which is that proper certification would take too long. Which shows that the body in charge of certification doesn't really believe that certification is necessary. Kind of like the DVLA taking your word for it that you can drive and handing you a licence.
Which is why I said that the world's regulators need to send a clear message to Boeing and the FAA.
Re: Boeing gamed the system because it could
The FAA is a US publically funded organisation. As such, it is part of the "big government" which US voters dislike. Allowing private companies to succeed or fail in a free market is "the US way".
For US readers: how much are you willing for your taxes to rise to pay for more FAA?
The FAA was set up to fail by underfunding. Nobody is talking about that either.
Airlines
asked for it. There is a primary cause for the development of that abberation. Airbus considerations on the side of Boink helped also.
Anyone ever see a rocket crash, or a self driving car?
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/20/musk-this-is-what-caused-the-spacex-launch-failure.html
“That’s an unfortunate thing because we could have saved Dragon [supply ship] if we had the right software there,”.
https://qz.com/1701070/spacex-missed-a-satellite-collision-warning/
"missed a potential collision warning because buggy software did not relay an alert"
https://text.npr.org/809207519
"allows its Autopilot system to be used on roadways that the software is not designed to handle, creating safety risks"
"...will lead a new, centralized organization of engineers who currently support the development and delivery of software embedded in Boeing's products and services"
That's an interesting move to take. It can end up being a double edged sword. Creating what amounts to an internal outsourcing organisation for your software engineering function, from which your other departments procure engineering services, can add a huge amount of operational friction and organisational politicking. The counter-argument is normally that the best people to tell experts how to best do their jobs are their fellow experts, which is generally fair, but if that new organisation is not sufficiently empowered to actually make meaningful decisions then they end up in an even weaker position - both unable to steer the project (because they have no corporate-level say) and unable to steer their own output (because they're 'just a supplier')
The fact that Jinnah is coming in with a job title of "only" VP indicates to external observers there is little interest in empowering him to Say No To Other Departments, and at best he'll be a peer of the other corporate project/department leaders. If they were really serious about making a centralised group of empowered, effective and world-class engineers we'd be seeing him rocking an SVP or GM title and heading up a genuine, dedicated subsidiary or global service line with a remit to overhaul organisational processes and culture from the root. Without that it's hard to conclude this is anything other than window dressing.
Pity they didn't think it that important earlier.
But it's not just the software.
Driving the software with non redundant sensors (which Boeing has done twice that I'm aware of so far) is not software but is certainly doesn't make that task easier.
Let's see if they can turn improve Boeing's delivery as well as its image.