INTRODUCTION This scenario planning report was conducted together with Mr. Reo Addai. Together with Mr.

Addai, we previously built a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) model to aid him in making a career choice decision, after he received four job offers from four different industries. Based on the MCDA, the software programmer job option appeared to be the best amongst all the job options. Mr. Addai wanted to take our career choice decision analysis much further and therefore decided that we explore the possible future perspectives of the software programming career in a time span of the next 20 years, and how these possible future scenarios can either affect his decision to pursue a career as a software programmer or aid him in mapping out a sensible strategy in order to be well prepared regardless of what the future might hold in store of a software programmer. In this report, three future scenarios were built over a 20-year time span. We discussed thoroughly and listed the obvious basic global trends that we believed wont change in the next 20 years, in diverse areas that have an impact on the software programming industry. Key uncertainties with regards to the industry in the next 20 years were also discussed thoroughly and listed. Based on the trends and uncertainties we built the three scenarios. Taking into account Mr. Addai overall objective of this exercise, we evaluated the different decision alternatives that had been extracted from the scenario planning process and assessed the robustness of these decision alternatives.

METHOD We began by having a discussion to define the strategic objective of this exercise. Mr Addai was very clear about his strategic objective to ensure that his job as a programmer would still be of relevance and of high demand in the next 20 years. Therefore the scope of our analysis was to investigate the viability of a software programming career for the next 20 years. After identifying the strategic objective, we proceeded to discussing and summarising our knowledge on the software programming career in the past. We realised that the software programming career in the past was limited to only a few people in very few companies; most notable companies were International Business Machines (IBM) and Microsoft. The software industry started expanding the early 1990s primarily due to increase in demand for personal computers (PC). This led to the springing up of new software companies and therefore the increase in demand for software programmers. During that time, technology hardware producing companies also started incorporating software programming into their business. This growth in the programming market led to the high demand for software programmers. This high demand also led to an increase in salary of programmers. In the mid 1990s due to technological advancements, non-PC technologies like mobile phones, video games, television set etc, started incorporating software programming in their devices. The opening up of more emerging markets around the world for these technologies ensured the continued increase in demand for software programmers. At present, demand for software programmers is slightly stagnant in the developed countries due to expansion of the operations of most technology companies into some developing countries. By painting a fundamental picture of the software programming career in the past, we then proceeded to discussing basic trends (either positive or negative) in diverse areas affecting the programming career, which Mr. Addai believed would still continue in the next 20 years. These trends were listed as follows: 1. The demand for state-of-art programming based technology mobile phones, video games, PCs, TV sets in developed countries will keep increasing.

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2. The demand for programming-based technology will increase substantially in emerging markets globally. 3. The policies of governments to ensure that majority of the countrys citizens are computer literates will still be prominent in most countries. 4. More programmers will be trained as youngsters increase their enthusiasm for technology. 5. The demand for complex technologies will make the computer programming job more challenging. 6. There will be an increase in more technology related courses. (In universities and colleges). 7. The demand for high speed internet will keep increasing. All these listed trends were analysed to ensure that each was relevant to our 20 year time span. Therefore by discussing each trend over again with Mr Addai, we came to the conclusion that all the trends listed above fitted within our 20 year time span. We then proceeded to discussing the key uncertainties hanging over the software programming industry. We identified the following uncertainties: 1. Will companies transfer a majority of their computer programming job to developing countries? 2. Will future complex software programs become successful? 3. Will current high salaries paid to software programmers in developed countries be sustained? 4. Will the high increase in programmers in future be matched with increase in programming jobs? 5. Will governments step in to regulate complex technologies due to possible threats to countries security? 6. Will governments adopt protectionist policies to prevent some technology-based jobs from leaving their countries? 7. Will the research into artificial intelligence (robots and other highly complex automated devices) succeed? 8. If artificial intelligence succeeds, can it be able to replace humans in computer programming entirely?

Based on these listed uncertainties, we explored further the interrelationships between the uncertainties. Using the correlation matrix (as suggested by Schoemaker 1995), we discussed how the occurrence of a listed uncertainty will affect the chances of another listed uncertainty occurring. Table 1.0 below shows the correlation investigation exercise that we undertook. The positive sign (+) indicating scenarios where the chance of a pair of uncertainties occurring together was high, the negative sign indicated the chance of a pair of uncertainties occurring to be not-sohigh, the zero value (0) indicated a no chance of both uncertainties occurring and the question mark sign (?) indicated the situations where we just couldnt determine the correlation between the pair of uncertainties.

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1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

2 ?

3 -VE +VE

4 -VE +VE +VE

5 +VE +VE ? -VE

6 +VE ? +VE +VE +VE

7 0 +VE -VE -VE ? +VE

8 -VE +VE -VE -VE +VE 0 +VE

Table 1.0: Correlation matrix for listed key uncertainties

By discussing with Mr Addai about interrelationships of the key uncertainties, we were able to build two possible extreme future scenarios: TECHNOLOGY BOOM AND GOVERNMENT PROTECTIONIST POLICIES There will be a substantial increase in demand for software programmers in the next 20 years. Peoples insatiable passion for advanced technology will increase a lot more and the demand for products will be so high that the larger technology companies wont be able to meet those demands. This will therefore lead to the springing up of several small technology companies to provide meet up the demand for products. The availability of a large number of technology companies, coupled with the demand from the public will lead to mass recruitment of software programmers and even the programmers available at that time wont be able to fill all the jobs available. This will eventually lead to a fierce competition amongst all technology companies to secure the services of the brightest software programmers. Based on the importance of technology companies to the economy, government will provide more tax concessions to technology companies and provide privileges and funding to software programming training schools. Government will also relax their immigration policy in an attempt to lure competent software programmer to live and work in the country. Software programmers will have a strong bargaining power and a lot of opportunities for career advancement. Technology companies will become one of the biggest employers in the country and therefore the government will start adopting protectionist policies to ensure that these companies dont move to another country due to the fear of a sharp increase in unemployment, should the companies relocate to another country. Technology companies will also dismiss the idea of moving operations elsewhere due to the tax concessions they receive from the government and the cost of relocating an already established operation to another country.

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THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Under this possible future scenario, research into artificial intelligence robots and highly complex programming devices that are capable to generating software programming codes - by technology companies will be extremely successful. This will therefore lead to the mass production of these artificial intelligence devices. Their availability in technology companies will make the work of a human software programmer redundant and most cases, inferior. The use of these artificial intelligence machines by technology companies will herald the end of the human computer programmer dawn. This will lead to huge computer programming job losses. Small computer firms who did not anticipate the advent of artificial intelligence will start folding or will be swallowed up by the bigger technology companies. Even some big companies who refuse to explore this area of technology will make substantial losses in terms of drastic share price reduction on the global capital market. They will also eventually be swallowed up by other technology companies. The ability of technology companies to meet technology demand wont be a problem due to the light speed at which these artificial intelligence machines generate computer programming codes. The government, sensing the changing phase of the technology industry a long time ago will rather focus on improving the employment prospects of another industry other than the technology industry. More so, the excitement of the advent of artificial intelligence will create a buzz in the global capital markets where the shares of technology companies will rise astronomically, which will favour the government of the day. The only employed software programmers will be those that specialised in artificial intelligence. Small companies with the right expertise and bold enough to pursue the artificial intelligence area will have readily available sources of funds (venture capital, private equity, partnerships, bank loans etc.). Unfortunately, Ordinary software programmers with no training in artificial intelligence wont be able to switch into the area due to the long number of years it takes to study artificial intelligence.

Having built these two scenarios with Mr Addai, we embarked on building a third scenario which was a middle ground scenario in between the two extreme scenarios weve already built. A FAIR AND JUST AGREEMENT The demand for computer programmers will still be high and the demand by the public for state-ofart technology will also increase. However, the low revenue generated by some products compared to the high cost of producing them will propel technology companies to start moving some operations to a developing country where cheap labour combined with favourable tax rates will turn loss-making products into profit-making products. This decision to relocate some business to other countries will be taken in consultation with the Workers Union of software programmers and the Business Department of the government. All parties will work together to ensure that any relocation decision does not affect the overall employability of software programmers in the country and the economy of the country. However, it will still appear that certain specialised areas in software programming will slightly demanded and therefore will be paid more than others. The shift in some operations to other countries by the big companies will inevitably create a void in the production of certain products. This will therefore lead to the setting up of small technology companies eager to take advantage and fill the production void in the country. Due to their small size these small companies will be more capable of making profits on operations that large technology companies deemed unprofitable. The springing up of several small technology companies will keep employment of software programmer stable, thereby offsetting the minimal job losses inflicted on the programming industry as a result of some business relocation.

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After building these scenarios, we then discussed about the implications of each scenario. According to the first scenario, making the decision to work as a software programmer will be a great decision. The scenario projects sustained growth in the software programming industry and the future look extremely bright. No specialised field is required to be successful in software programming under this scenario. The scenario would be the dream scenario of every software programmer. The third scenario offers a very bleak prospect for software programmers. In this scenario, making a decision to work as software programmer could actually a terrible decision. But, starting training in artificial intelligence from now will place him a better in the next 20 years than a lot of programmers. This scenario therefore requires that a serious attention is placed on artificial intelligence. The second scenario, according to Mr Addai, offers a middle ground outlook of how the software programming job is heading by analysis the current trends in the industry. Even though a software programmers job will be somewhat well secured under this scenario, attaining specialty in different areas of software programming would be a smart idea. Therefore based on our brief discussion on the implications, we decided on three strategic approaches which depended on the viability of software programming job over the next 20 years under each identified scenario. The strategies are listed below: 1. Work as any normal programmer and ignore the possibility of any highly unlikely changes. 2. Work as a programmer but embark on specialisation training in different areas of software programming. 3. Decide against work as a software programmer at all and find another career to pursue.

Based on the strategies that we agreed on, we then compared each strategy to the scenarios that we had built to derive our decision alternatives. Table 2.0 overleaf shows a table of the different decision alternatives available to Mr Addai. This exercise was done to ensure that we clearly understand the different decision alternative based a particular strategy under a certain scenario. By comparing each strategy under each scenario, we are able to understand better the implications and therefore perform better robustness analysis of the strategies.

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STRATEGIES

SCENARIOS

Technology boom and government protectionism

Fair and just agreement

Age of artificial intelligence

Normal Programmer anticipate nothing

Secured job as a programmer More bargaining power in terms of salary

Obtain good job security but face possible loss of job due to company relocations. May earn less than other specialised colleagues. May struggle with career advancements due to lack of specialised knowledge.

Doomed to loose job. Almost impossible to gain employment as software programmer ever gain.

Less need specialise to

Good career advancement Less competition for jobs

Specialise in different field of programming

Probably more demand due specialism.

in to

More bargaining power in terms of salary. Good career advancement.

Well-placed than normal programmers in terms of job security. High power. bargaining

Well positioned the industry specialised artificial intelligence.

in if in

Enormous increase in salary and higher bargaining power. Enjoy the prestige of being the few artificial intelligence programmers. Strong career advancement.

Strong career advancement.

Decide against working as a software programmer

Lose out on the strong growth of the programming industry. Regret making a terrible career decision. Affect work attitude and enthusiasm towards other chosen career.

Same outcomes as in technology boom and government protectionism.

Justify decision not to pursue software programmer. Could have little regret for not pursuing in software programming and specialising in artificial intelligence.

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Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Model for each scenario An MCDA model was built for each scenario by taking into account the different strategies. This exercise was necessary because it allowed us to evaluate the overall performance of each strategic decision option under each scenario. Our focus wasnt on assessing the strategy with the overall highest expected value. Rather, it was on identifying how inconsistent or consistent a strategy performance was, over all the scenarios. Inter-scenario robustness and Inter-scenario risk are terms coined by Montibeller and Franco (2010). Inter-scenario robustness, according to Montibeller and Franco (2010), ...assesses how far from the feasible maximum (ie, 100, if the scale is normalised between 0 and 100) the overall performances of an option is under each scenario; thus a robust option is one that has a strong performance whatever the scenario considered. Interscenario risk, also according to Montibeller and Franco (2010), ...is the spread of overall performances of an option across scenarios. We therefore devised a way of building the MCDA model for each scenario in Hiview, where the root node was the scope of this whole exercise the viability of software programming- and the criteria were the strategic objectives. Fig 1.0 below shows the Decision tree in Hiview.

TECHNOLOGY BOOM AND GOVERNMENT PROTECTIONISM SCENARIO Under each scenario, we decided to explore the use of MACBETH in eliciting value judgment for the different strategic options under each strategic objective. This approach proved to be a success since the Mr. Addai who is the decision-maker readily agreed with the value judgments. The tables and figures below show the MACBETH and value judgments for the strategic options under the different objectives in this scenario. Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) No prog. career Table 3.0: MACBETH for Secured Employment Criterion Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) Very Weak No prog. career Current Value

Very Extreme

Strong-

100

Strong - Extreme

80

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Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) No prog. career

Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) Very Weak - Weak

No prog. career

Current Value

Strong - Extreme

100

Strong Strong

Very

80

Table 4.0: MACBETH for the Increase in earnings criterion

Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) No prog. career

Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) Very Weak

No prog. career

Current Value

Very Strong Extreme

100

Very Strong Extreme

83

Table 5.0: MACBETH for the career development criterion

After the value judgments of the strategic options under each criterion had been obtained, I discussed again with Mr Addai his value judgement for each criterion/objective. He saw the Secured Employment criterion as the most important objective. Thus, Secured Employment criterion was assigned a maximum 100 (On a scale of 0 100). In comparing how much he cared about an increase in Secured Employment to an increase in the remaining two criterion/objectives, he scored Increase in Earning criterion a value 70 and Career Advancement, a value 60. Figure 4.0 shows the results under the technology boom and government protectionist scenario.

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Figure 1.0: FAIR AND JUST SCENARIO The approach used in the eliciting value judgments in the Technology Boom Scenario was used in this scenario.

Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) No prog. career

Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) Moderate

No prog. career

Current Value

Strong

100

Moderate Strong

50

Table 6.0: MACBETH for the secured employment criterion

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Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) No prog. career

Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) Moderate- Strong

No prog. career

Current Value

Strong Extreme

100

Strong Strong

Very

57.14

Table 7.0: MACBETH for the Increase in earnings criterion Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) No prog. career Table 8.0: MACBETH for the career advancement criterion Maintaining the values judgement for the criterion/objective, the result under the fair and just scenario is shown below. Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) Moderate- Strong No prog. career Current Value

Strong strong

Very

100

Moderate - Strong

50

Figure 2.0: Results of strategic choice under the Fair and Just scenario

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Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Software programmer (specialised in diverse areas) Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) No prog. career

Ordinary software programmer (no specialty) Moderate- Strong

No prog. career

Current Value

Strong strong

Very

100

Moderate - Strong

50

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