I've been thinking about the S-Series and wondering, is it doomed to failure?

When I came back from the Christmas break, in January 2022, I was determined to be positive.?

At the end of some training, in November 2021, I asked a colleague if we were coming across as too pessimistic. Our intention is always to be neutral, to be factual about, well?everything?really but in this case, the S-Series Specifications for IPS.?

At the end of this particular period, it felt as though the scales had tipped toward the negative, however unintentional that may have been.

I had an idea shortly after that, that I would write a sort of journal entry, exploring a year of working within the S-Series community. I had the idea and I parked it, for Christmas, knowing that I would come back to it in January.

So, armed with an idea for an article and a desire to be more positive, I came into the office and had a conversation...

...and ended up penning this piece, exploring if the S-Series endeavour is doomed to failure, instead.

In truth, it's difficult to write overtly positively when I vacillate so drastically between glinty-eyed optimism and, well, that despair that is so familiar to those of an ILS bent.

So, where does my glinty-eyed optimism come from?

One of the reasons for my optimism is, well, it's a beautiful thing. A truly multinational endeavour, pulling in the experience, talent and opinion from support engineers and data modellers from the US and across Europe.

What a thing to be a part of.

Add to that, the seemingly collective drive to do things better. To build on the foundations of ILS, using established, but perhaps now dated, guidance and practice as a start point to drag the discipline from the quagmire to the 21st century.?

The specifications, and associated data models, are all at different levels of maturity and, as a result, wholesale adoption of the S-Series as an entire suite is seldom heard of. Adoption of the longer-standing members of the suite, S1000D and S2000M, are more common than the others but there is reason to be optimistic here too and I'll explain two reasons.

The first is, and I'll use an S-Series buzzword here, 'harmonization'. Toward the end of 2021 (despite the April date that appears on the covers of the specifications) the IPS Council issued the first 'block release' of the S-Series. This was the first step toward alignment of the future development of the specifications and, while it focussed on a common release date, rather than common development, it is a positive step in the right direction.

In future, all major releases of the specifications will be issued in a harmonized block.?

The second reason for optimism, regarding the maturity of the specifications, is that organisations are beginning to look seriously at adopting even the youngest of them. That means that the feedback loop from the community will begin to swell with suggested improvements and other feedback.

The reward for early adoption may be the increased ability to influence future development and the Steering Committees (responsible for developing the specifications) welcome, indeed are very keen to leverage, live experience of them.

A very brief word on my experience of working in the S-Series community, after all, that was the original idea for this piece.?

I am a UK industry representative, through Team Defence Information, on the steering committees responsible for SX000i, S4000P and S6000T.?

My experiences with those committees have been varied; I'll summarise my experience below (In no particular order so don't try to guess which is which):

The first steering committee, I have been remiss in my contributions. The meetings happen on a regular drumbeat, unfortunately, that drumbeat always falls in conflict with another commitment but, correspondence outside of those meetings has always been friendly and inclusive.?

The second steering committee has been borderline dysfunctional, with limited communications and a distinct feeling of not being welcome. I don't think it's a personal thing, but more to do with my (and maybe others) route into the steering committee.

The third steering committee is a wonderful place to be. It's party central. With lots of diverse members, some specialists in the field, some (like me) on the fringes of it but very welcoming, very open to discussion and input, supported by an obvious collective desire to create something good and useful.

Anyway, back to it. So, given all those reasons for optimism, where does my pessimism come from?

ILS is not a new concept. You can change its name, you can add an element or two but the principles have been around for some time. The benefit that an organisation has now, is that there is a solid foundation to build on. You need only improve what's there, rather than invent from scratch.

You'd think that would be a reasonably quick process, right?

I think it was the late British journalist Christopher Hitchens that said that the only good thing to have been written by committee was the US Constitution. The point, I guess to take from that, isn't necessarily the greatness of the US Constitution (I am not able to comment on such things) but the badness of everything else. Why?

Because writing by committee is hard. Coherence is difficult. Consensus is difficult. And when coherence and consensus are difficult, clarity is nigh on impossible.

When writing a specification, coherence is challenged in many ways. Some of these documents are enormous, in terms of page count if nothing else, so the actual job of authoring or revising content tends to fall to 'chapter owners' and, while the work packages are agreed at committee level, that can leave the activity open to divergence between chapters.?

Add to that, the remarkable effort that it must take for those for whom English is not their first language, to write the content. I have nothing short of admiration for those authors but, I also recognise that difficulties in articulating ideas clearly and in selecting language that is congruous with the other authors, who may be writing in their own tongue.?

Understandably, some of these specifications don't read as coherent documents because the individual chapters are laced with the fingerprints of individual authors.

While there is beauty in the multinational endeavour, for sure, there is also crippling complexity and, dare I say, a smattering of politics. The people involved in the committees are there to represent the interests of their organisations or their nations. That's a lot of opinion to wrangle and to align before reaching consensus.

An S-Series Specification is written by a steering committee, with all the difficulties associated with coherence and consensus, some of which I have discussed above.

The S-Series Suite though, as a whole, is written by a committee of committees.?

With a set-up as complex as this, clear direction is vital to success. At steering committee level, I haven't seen any evidence of this.?

After the block release in 2021, the conversation turned to 'what are we going to do next?'. Sounds wonderfully proactive but, I worry that without defining what a finished and complete specification looks like, without defining the finished product - the aim- the effort of all the beautiful, driven, talented people involved in the process is, by definition, aimless.

There is no check and balance against a stated target with which to decide whether a topic is worthy of inclusion or not.

Nor is there, from an S-Series Suite perspective, a clearly defined end-point for the steering committees to work to. There is a release plan, which details the anticipated major releases, but I haven't seen anything that depicts what success looks like.

I sometimes wonder, if a smaller, focussed, specialist organisation - with financial backing or crowdfunding - would achieve greater success, in a fraction of the time, simply because of the benefits in clarity of direction, natural coherence. This could then be approved by a committee.

When I introduced the benefits of early adoption, I suggested that there may be an increased ability to influence future development, but...

Early adoption is probably a misnomer (Except in the case of S6000T which really is new). S3000L, for example, is not widely adopted and is still viewed as being a 'new' specification. Its first issue though, was in 2010, some 12 years ago!

The development of these things is not quick.

The block release drumbeat has now been set at three years. If you're looking to adopt one of these specifications now, but there is a concept or set of guidance missing, then you need to wait three years for a major update - or find something else to fill the gap.

The specifications can make minor releases in the interim but they are likely to be revisions to existing content, rather than adding new.

Is the S-Series doomed to fail?

I hope not. There is merit in the idea, people have invested a lot of time in them and they are trying to solve a genuine problem.

I wonder though if there is appetite in a market that has been ravaged by poor communication and execution of ILS, for another set of guidance that doesn't quite do it. With 'early adoption' there may well be a big opportunity for the success and improvement of the S-Series but I wonder if that could also be the biggest threat to the whole endeavour?

Studying the S-Series Suite is, as has been said before, a long and laborious process. The page count, which by no means should be seen as a measure of success, is staggering and the task to read, understand and then decide what 'adoption' actually means is a big one.

Could organisations pick them up and simply decide it's not worth replacing an imperfect system with yet another?