Failure by design - Lessons for product and project managers

There is often discussion about project and product failures and all sorts of statistics that would tell you about the need to manage people, process and delivery. Without doubt some projects fail for technical reasons, but my experience is that it can be easy to predict failure simply by looking at the management and tools.

If you bought self-assembly furniture you'd expect tools, a guide and the components. Now it may well be that the components are faulty, but I suggest that it is often the case that the tools are absent or not used correctly, or the guide is missing or not understood. Any deficiency results in problems and costs.

Design is about form and function, it is about process and product. It is the end-to-end process from concept to creation through to user experience.  Ikea design for example is not solely about a chair but about the processes that lead to the construction of a chair and the later benefits of having a chair.

It is really important for product and service providers, and project managers who combine both, to understand the importance of process, product, outcome and experience to overall success.

Chernobyl disaster was caused by "I wonder what happens if we turn off all the safety and try this"

Sometimes running a business without clear policies, processes and procedures can lead to disaster. I'm not against innovation or agile but next time somebody says "what's the worst that can happen" do give this some thought!

The cause of the accident was human error.  The RBMK reactor is designed to run at or near full power or be shut down.  Running it at low power is a bad idea, since that design is unstable at low power settings.  There was also a design flaw in the control rods that, under the right conditions, could cause a momentary increase in reactor power.  Anyway, the reactor operators (without input from the folks who designed the reactor) were running a test to see if, after a shutdown, the residual heat in the core could make enough steam to keep a backup turbine spinning to power the backup cooling system.  Great idea- if they'd known exactly what they were doing.  When the reactor (being held at low power for the test) went unstable, the operators tried to SCRAM it (emergency shutdown.)  Tragically, when they dropped the control rods, the reactor was in the exact state that would make the control rods cause a power spike.  That caused a "power excursion" in the core.  Now, a hair dryer puts out about 1,000 Watts of heat.  At full power, the Chernobyl reactor would power 1 million hairdryers, and put out as much heat as 3.5 million hairdryers running at once.  Now, imagine releasing enough heat to run those 3.5 million hairdryers for months- in half a second.  All the water in the core flashed to steam, and blew the reactor to smithereens

Imaging if a £10 note had a memory

If a £10 note had a memory it could say where it has been, and what it has been used for. An intelligent £10 note could even decide what it can be used for and what it cannot.

It is entirely acceptable that Iceland should have its own currency and Britain should have its. But Iceland is the size of Bristol, so if size isn’t the factor maybe the factor is community?

If a community had its own currently (rather that being like Greece, hostage to the decisions of another)  then an intelligent £10 note could help the economy.

Of course you’d always have choice – you could have an intelligent £10, plus EUR, USD, GBP, etc., but the local intelligent £10 would be really useful for benefits, grants, discounts, tax community services etc.

Imagine paying people in intelligent that could only be used for food, drink, housing and not used for drugs or crime. Would that be a good thing? What if they had EUR, USD, GBP for everything else?

What if taxes raised could only be used for the purposes agreed?

Is the above is the future of Crypto currency?

By TimHJRogers
https://www.linkedin.com/in/timhjrogers/

Bitcoin and Blockchain Jersey
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