One hour guided tour of quality attenuation science

Are you responsible for engineering application performance, or operating a network service and care about quality? If so, then I have an “instant professional insight upgrade” to offer to you.

I have recently had a whole series of clients come to me wanting to learn more about the science of quality attenuation. In response to this I have pulled together the relevant slides from a variety of presentations, training courses and workshops that I have delivered in the last few years. This is a one-hour guided whistle-stop tour of the key concepts, and how they relate to an overall ‘lean quality’ business transformation.

This new science enables innovative tools for better network performance measurement. We can now measure quality in digital supply chains with extremely high fidelity, and with the user’s perspective. This is a bit like how a functional MRI scan looks inside a human body and can see the blood flow and how it relates to the surrounding tissue. It’s certainly an improvement on poking the sick broadband patient in the ribs and asking “does it hurt here?”!

This science also supports new scheduling technologies that allows for predictable application performance with low cost and risk. This is a novelty in packet networking: we can actually engineer outcomes with a known safety margin. This is a departure from the current emergent ones that require prayers to the packet pixies to do benevolent “best effort” magic on our behalf!

The novel branch of mathematics that quantifies this “quality attenuation” is called ∆Q. It sounds scarier than it really is: it’s kind of the “complex numbers of probability”. It’s not in the textbooks yet, and it looks destined to become basic undergraduate knowledge in future once its utility catches on.

The usual audiences are R&D departments and product development and testing professionals. Nothing I cover requires more than a general understanding of networking and the typical numeracy of any science or maths degree, if that. Any well-informed telecoms regulatory lawyer or policymaker should also be able to grasp it.

Topics covered in the webinar include:

  • Semantics and their relationship to science and engineering
  • The overall conceptual framework of network performance
  • Quality attenuation and ∆Q definitions
  • Why ∆Q is the ideal metric
  • The reframing of quality as a privation
  • The relationship of quality attenuation to supply chains
  • The ∆Q morphism: a multi-layered model of reality
  • How to measure quality attenuation
  • The decomposition of ∆Q into its three basis components
  • Examples of ∆Q measurements
  • The contract between supply and demand expressed using ∆Q
  • ∆Q metrics compared to traditional metrics
  • How to budget quality attenuation in digital supply chains and the resulting ∆Q algebra and calculus
  • Designing with ∆Q-based: example of quality assurance in a polyservice network

The interactive webinar takes an hour to present. I can tailor my focus to your needs and situation. We can take whatever time you need for discussion immediately after the presentation. I include email-based after-care for questions you have later on.

The price is £500+VAT for up to ten attendees from commercial organisations. For the distillation of many years of work (and the keys to the kingdom of demand-led networking) it is an absolute steal in my biased opinion!

I am working with my business partners to deliver a series of ∆Q-based measurement tools and management service offers later this year. Existing consulting clients will be given preferential access to these breakthrough technologies as they become publicly available.

To get in touch to schedule a webinar session (and to become a priority list client) contact me at education@martingeddes.com.

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