How The Egyptians Built the Pyramids Your Mummy Would Know

How The Egyptians Built the Pyramids

• Your Mummy Would Know

This material is the work of Lord Prince Imhotep, Chief Architect and Designer of the Great Pyramid at Giza

• This material is the work of Lord Prince Imhotep, Chief Architect and Designer of the Great Pyramid at Giza

• Equivalent of COO or GM.

• Be in the head of Imhotep

• What he learned from Pop

Disclaimer

• This material is all factual

• The results of the work presented were completed four millennia ago

• I am only the reporter

• Blame John Zachman

An Aside

• Will Shakespeare

• The aside as a speech

• We will use the aside to look forward

• See how well the lessons were learned

Useless Information

• I will tell you stories that will seem to mean nothing

• Everything I tell you will prepare a solid foundation for what follows

• This concept of a solid foundation is very important

But First – A Test

• How Big is the Great Pyramid?

• Height, Area Covered

• When was it Built?

• How many built it?

• How many slaves?

• How long did it take?

The Mystery

• How was it constructed

• Many Theories

• A ramp or two or three

• A slide and crude hoist

• They carried them up

• Or my favorite `- Aliens

The Pyramid – A Design Problem

Two Major Attempts

At last, we got it right

• The Red Pyramid of Snefru

• Khufu’s Father

The Pyramids Today

This is the Inside of the Tomb

History and Background

• 2400 BCE

• Fifth Year of Khufu’s Reign

• Khufu was 2nd Pharaoh of 4th Dynasty

• Egypt had little or no outside contact

• Government was combination of Monarchy and Theocracy

Khufu Wanted a Tomb

• In the Giza Plain

• Ensured Safety for the dead

• Eight times bigger than Red Pyramid

• Khufu expanded the empire by eight fold

• Further Protection Needed

• Internal Chambers

• Completed while alive

• Twenty Five year timeframe

Why Giza?

• 100 Feet above sea level

• No threat of flooding

• One mile from the Nile

• Most stuff came by barge

• Tons and Tons of granite

• Seven different kinds

• Did I mention Limestone?

Lunch with God

• Personal Responsibility – Gave me his Ankh

• Gave me Supreme Authority

• Gave me Unlimited Money

• My Life was at Stake

Project Failure Rate

• Standish Group

• 23 per cent succeed
• 77 per cent fail
• 27 per cent fail miserably

Why so bad

• Do it cheap

• Do it with minimal staff

• Do it fast

• Do it cheap

• Does the CEO want this application?

• Did I mention do it cheap?

Maintenance

• Applications are a point in time solution

• The business changes, the application change

• Common defects

• New interfaces

• USAA had more interfaces than applications

• More time is spent maintaining interfaces than the applications

Authority

The Cartouche

General Leslie Groves

• Man responsible for the Atomic Bomb

• Strategic Imperative

• Letter of Command from President Roosevelt

Imhoteps’ First Questions

• What Is needed

• How Am I going to do this

• Where am I going to build

• Who will help me

• What do I do first – last

• Why am I doing this?

• I could answer this one

Didn’t Have

• Iron Tools

• Pi

• 0

• The Fulcrum

• An industrial wheel and axle

• The Yoke

Had

• People

• Resources

• Space

• Building Know How

• Dedication to the Project

• A method of managing and communicating

What to do First

• Visited the Great Step Pyramid

• Largest, oldest structure in the world

• Visited the Red Pyramid

• Small Technical Problem

• Back at Giza

• Two months walking and measuring

• Back to Memphis

The terrain

• Sandy

• How do you build on sand

• Dig out the sand until down to the bed rock

• Back fill with large stones and rubble

Questions and Issues

• Started to record every question and issue

• Wrote them down as they occurred to me

• No Particular Order

• I needed a plan

• Lists could help me organize my thinking

• The lists would become my plan

Benefits of Lists

• Defined a problem area

• Collected like issues and questions into one place

• Set the scope and context of any specific issue

• Set the total scope and context for all

• Intensified my thinking

• Created more lists

• Defined what I would need to know

Five Major Categories

• What was needed

• How to do it

• Where to be done

• Who would do it

• When to do it

Early Observation

• Any Issue on one list had an extension on every other list

• Needed to make new lists based on issues and questions across all the lists

• Created the idea of an “Interrogative”

• New Concept

Order to the Problem

• There is a natural and required progression

• The steps of progression could be defined

• It became mandatory to follow the progression

• Could not make any assumptions all understood the progression

Progression Order

• Define and Understand the problem area

• Assign Authority and Responsibility to each area

• Design what was required

• Assign responsibility to build

• Get the right people on the site

• Continually monitor progress

The Event

• What ever you think needs to be done first, something else must be done beforehand

• Before the Pyramids he had to build the city of Gaza first

• A large city for the time - 25,000 people, statistics

Importance of Event

• Every project needs to know what the end product must be

• Every project has an idea of where you are

• What is the killer is no one knows how to get from here to there

About that Foundation Stuff

Enter Abbot Suger

• Old Romanesque Church went up in smoke (Made of wood)

• Suger had just finished the Church at St. Denys

• Wanted to build his Masterpiece

How Funded

• Convinced the Pope

• Convinced the Royals

• Convinced himself

• Chartres was a crossroads town
• Easy to get to

One Little Problem

• The Foundation

• And the results were

Imhotep’s Problem

• Knew where he had to get

• Knew where he was

• Had to figure out how to get to the end in twenty-five years

• With mostly unskilled workers

How high can you count

• Can’t you just here Imhotep talking to Pharaoh and saying –

• Hey boss, just how much can I spend on this project?

• He needed metrics

• How much
• How many
• How long

Needed to Communicate

• Fortunately had Hieroglyphics

• Papyrus, brush, paint
• Portable
• Easy to Copy (?)

• Unfortunately had Hieroglyphics

• 6,000 Characters – Symbols, Pictures, Sounds
• Method of Display

Need to talk about this

The Big Boom

• The Atomic Bomb cost $2,000,000,000

• The Bomb was done completely in secret

• General Leslie Groves had to insure secure communications between four locations

• Stalin did not want the bomb

Problem of Communication

• Need a method of expression

• Must express ideas of thought

• Must Change Implicit Idea to Explicit rendering

• Must have an order

• Must be repeatable and teachable

• Pedagogy

First Writing Systems

• Arbitrarily Designed

• Could have been sqmeu, etc.

• Needed to be formalized

• Needed to be accepted

• Needed a standard method of teaching

Information Persistence

• Think about an encyclopedia

• Why did man create such a thing

• So lessons would not have to be repeated every time

• A history of where we have been

• A guide to help us design new

• Steel Case

A Pedagogy

• Arbitrarily Designed

• Established a uniform method of teaching

• Established the method of communication

• Started as Implicit evolved to explicit

• Based on teaching a language it established how all subjects would be taught

Rules of Writing Systems

• Produce a standard form or picture of each character.

• Create a standard spelling for each word.

• Establish standard pronunciations of each letter and each word.

• Institute standard meanings of each word.

• Set up standard rules for the use of words.

No Modifications Allowed!!!!!!

• Once established could not be changed by individuals

• Created “standards”

• Made more acceptable to all

• True for both language and pedagogy

• If altered by individual destroyed power of communication

Far Reaching Ramifications

• Applies to any form that changes Implicit to Explicit

• Applies to the construction of any scientific or engineering principle

• Each discipline has its own language and method of presentation

• Each has own set of rules

The Basics of Data Are Born

• Would need to have standards

• Would have to be complete

• Would have to be accurate

• Would need to be transferable

• Would need to be repeatable

Enter the joy of the Data Model

• So just which formalism do you use?

• Why are there so many different formalisms?

• Who is Right?

• Can something be done to eliminate the confusion?

Not a Chance

• Mine is better than yours

• Always done this way

• Inability to retrain

• Replace with new silver bullets

• Last time we tried it it didn’t work

• No Budget

• It takes too long and costs too much

The Block

The Block II

The Block III

The Block IV

Process Order

What was Created

• Six Major Engineering Disciplines

• Method Of Rules Support

• Method of Data Support

• A civilization that lasted more than 3000 years

Language and Rules Relevant to Discipline

• Accounting & Law – All about data

• Industrial Engineering

• Civil Engineering

• Organizational Engineering

• Logistical Engineering

• Industrial Psychology

What Pharaoh knew about Data

• If it wasn’t reported it didn’t exist

• If the data wasn’t of interest to him it didn’t exist

• If the data did not get him what he wanted when he wanted it, it did not exist

• What was on the reports was what existed and he held all accountable for everything

Organization Rules

Proof of Examples

• Each Picture Clearly Communicates Entire Thought

• It makes what is implicit explicit

• Know the Symbols, Know the Language, Know the Data

• Each has rules of use

• Rules of Use are not violated

What the Renderings Mean

• Each of the pictures is a model

• A model changes the implicit to explicit

• A model clearly communicates the idea in a picture format

• Know the language of the model, know the explicit ideas, know the data

• A model needs Rules Rules Rules

• A model creates Data, Data, Data

Rules of Modeling Systems

• Produce a standard form or picture of each shape.

• Create a standard spelling for using shapes.

• Establish standard pronunciations for each shape.

• Institute standard meanings of each shape.

• Set up standard rules for the use of shapes.

Imhoteps Rules of Rules

• Know What Pharaoh wants

• Know what and when to report
• Know what unit of measure and metrics are
• Get the information correct
• Rules and data are relative to a location or domain
• Rules constrain, permit, direct and manage
• Break a rule, pay the price (enforce and comply or die) Verify the truth of the data
• Enforcement must be swift
• Delegate authority and responsibility
• Hold all accountable
• Its all about physics

The Ultimate Rule Hieroglyph

Proof of Rules for Data

• Fills all needs of a language

• Fills all needs of pedagogy

• Fills all needs of model

• Creates a True Standard

• Clearly communicates all in a glance

• Is precise and correct

• Establishes Laws and Rules of the Discipline of Data

Questions?

Minneapolis Dama