TSA: What are they for?

As consultants, we fly around a lot. After a while, one gets pretty good at judging transit times, dealing with fly cancellations and delays, and the inevitable TSA security screening. But, on one recent trip, I suddenly wondered what one specific procedure, the inspection of your boarding pass with an ID was for. What was the purpose of determining who you are and whether you are flying?

Now, several obvious answers pop up into mind. TSA is trying to determine if you are the same person as the person who bought the airline ticket. TSA is trying to prevent unauthorized entry into the boarding area. ID check is a first step of security by TSA to determine suspicious people.

But there are several flaws in this thinking. First, why would it matter if your ID matched your boarding pass? If I am not carrying any explosives or dangerous materials, why block my entry? Perhaps I want to wait inside the terminal and surprise my girlfriend when she arrives? Isn't the whole metal detector, explosive air puffer, and x-ray suppose to stop me from carrying dangerous materials? If TSA is concerned about people entering the terminal and using their physical bodies to create harm, that would mean that everyone is a potential threat. I could always use my fists.

The second argument is that TSA is trying to prevent unauthorized entry. Well, how would TSA actually know if I'm authorized or not? If you have ever printed a boarding pass at home, you know that it is very easy to duplicate a boarding pass. Heck, a PhD student event wrote a php script to generate duplicate NWA boarding passes. Besides, wouldn't actual terrorists just buy an airline ticket anyways?

Finally, ID check is a first way to determine if the person is suspicious. Now, this an area that I do find at least an acceptable answer. I would assume that a person carrying some bomb meeting a TSA officer where he has to hand over his boarding pass and ID would be a little nervous. But, then again, most TSA people barely glance at the ID and boarding pass. No questions are asked. In addition, I've noticed different airports perform the same inspection differently. Some use an ultraviolet light to check the authenticity of the ID (i.e. state driver license) while others just glance to check the name on the boarding pass matches the ID.

Perhaps TSA could save tax payers some money by removing this useless step in the security process and put the money into better training and more staff for the actual screeners.

Don't thinks security is bad? Take at look at this PBS documentary.

Oh, if you have other reasons that you think TSA does the ID check, please let me know.

Performance Review: Feedback

I've been told its important after every major or minor project to solicit feedback. Below is the type of feedback I received after my first project.

Pro:
I require minimum direction, can work independently with guidance
Good at quantitative analysis

Cons:
Require improvement in writing, specifically grammar, proofreading, putting ideas into text


Things to communicate in future projects:
1. What type of style does the person have?
2. Leverage the available skills I've learned and communicate what I have done.
3. Communicate at the beginning of the project expectations and work styles

3 Tips of being a good BA
1. Have analytical skills
2. Quality deliverables
3 Communicate, communicate, communicate

Things I Learned

It has been an incredible busy and exciting two weeks. I felt like I learned more in the last two weeks than in entire semester at college. Part of this reason might be because I’m actually hungry to learn rather than passively attending classes. In any case, it was a great opportunity so let me delve in a bit further.

About two weeks ago, I was tasked by the Senior Executive (SE) to perform an IT Spend Analysis on our currently client. It would be a two week turnaround time with the SE giving most of the responsibilities to me. I was a little apprehensive about the whole project considering it would be presented to the CIO of our client rather than just general senior client executives. To make matters worse, the SE was going to be on vacation the entire week when I would be performing my analysis.

But the SE had given me pretty good guidance on who I could reach out to for information that I needed. In course of my analysis, I got a chance to work with Accenture Researchers, specialist in finding difficult to locate information to use for my benchmarking analysis. I also got to work with the consultant on my project o go over the IT Spend Analysis process to understand both how the work should be done in a conceptual model and what type of information the results for the analysis would provide to the client. Finally, I had the opportunity to operate independently without close supervision on conduction meetings with client executives and Accenture SE, deciding research results and analyzing key findings.

There were definite moments when I was stuck or unsure of how to handle the situation. One area that I’m working towards is building a better working relationship with lower level client personnel that I would work on in a daily basis. I find that I can’t build the same level of report as I would like to have. This definitely impacts the working relationship at times, but I’m unsure how better to proceed.

Another area where I think I’ll be able to improve next time is time management. After getting an idea of the turnaround time necessary for different types of work, I’ll be able to gauge how long it would take me to complete different amount of work.

On the following Monday, I got to present my findings to the CIO. It was definitely an interesting presentation. I had expected it would be more of my speaking followed by a question and answer section. But it was more of a conversation rather than presentation. We would talk about a slide for a few minutes with him asking questions and then move on to the next slide. It was during the presentation that I realized why being able to calculate numbers in your head quickly for percentages or in general was helpful because when the CIO asked for numbers outside my calculations, I was definitely stumbling along. Furthermore, there were some pretty significant mistakes in my presentation powerpoint that resulted in me second guessing a lot of my calculations. Thank goodness the SE was there to help.

While in the presentation, I realized that confidence in a presentation results both from experience and knowledge. Even though the SE didn’t do any significant amount of work, she trusted in my slides to pull out key results and interrupt them on the spot. She had already credibility and her knowledge of the operations of the client coupled with many years of experience was something I lacked. I simply wasn’t comfortable making any large recommendations because I didn’t believe in myself or the numbers and ideas that I had.

But this wasn’t the only analysis that kept me busy last week. I also did work examining the outsourcing provider’s offshoring initiative. Unlike the previous work, this required less financial analysis, but I utilized and honed many of the same skills as in my previous work. In the end, I enjoyed both work very much and was able to manage them quite well without doing too much over time.

Which makes me want to end on a note; I think working overtime isn’t necessarily a good think. It shows a failure in time management and project management skills. Given the time frame needed to complete certain tasks, it should be that there are one and off times between work and non-work. Managing those is part of the work/life balance. While an analyst has less control, it should be a skills that requires learning.