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> When considering ideas, we think “how might it work?” is more interesting than “why will it fail?” Engineering involves critical thinking. You should have a
by elwell 7y ago
> When considering ideas, we think “how might it work?” is more interesting than “why will it fail?”
Engineering involves critical thinking. You should have a firm belief that what you wish to create can be created. However, that is simply a foundation upon which to throw as many "why will it fail?" permutations as you can generate. This isn't pessimism, it's the culling of error, like a sculpture from a block of marble.
- olau 7y agoThere's a context-dependent trade-off between analyzing, using the currently available information and what can be reasonably be deduced from that, and experimenting.
- elliotf 7y agoThe difference being having a more positive/helpful/constructive mindset. With "how might it work" you're proposing solutions to the potential "why will it fail" problems rather than dumping more obstacles in the way. "this will work if we do X because it will fail if Y" vs "this isn't going to work because Y" I think the prior would be a more pleasant experience.
- yawboakye 7y agoSome clarification on the "why will it fail?" question. It's different and less constructive than "how will it fail?" which asks for failure modes and mitigations. It's a superior discussion to "why will it fail?" That said, "why will it fail?" is also inferior to the pre-mortem discussion starter: "why did it fail?"
- pjmorris 7y agoAgreed. I recently read Fernando Corbato's Turing Award speech, "On Building Systems That Will Fail" [0] Corbato drove development of Multics and its predecessor, CTSS, laying the foundation for much of current operating systems practice. He states his main thesis as 'the question to ask when designing such systems is not: "if something will go wrong, but when will it?"' I do not think he asks this in a defeatist sense (look at what he built!), but in a realist sense. He claims that, for a sufficiently complicated system built on new ideas, that neither rigor in design nor thoroughness in testing is sufficient to account for all of the unintended consequences of the system's design. Without considering the negative consequences of new designs, one is apt to learn them by hard experience. [0] http://larch-www.lcs.mit.edu:8001/~corbato/turing91/ http://larch-www.lcs.mit.edu:8001/~corbato/turing91/
- ww520 7y agoIt's just good risk management to ask the "why will it fail" question to find out the failure boundary of a system. Know where and when the breaking points are give everyone more confident in the system.