DEVELOPING A PATTERN OF FAILURE

There are problem-solving methods that can help us add rigor and practice. They ask thought-provoking questions that guide you to collect information and look for very specific patterns, rather than shotgunning and looking at everything in the system. These vary in their level of rigor, detail, and prescription. In Chapter 10, “How to Choose Your Method,” we’ll discuss how to select some of these methods over others. For now, know that when you’re dealing with hard problems, having guidance is extremely helpful, but not exhaustive. Hard problems tend to be unique, so use these as a guide rather than a recipe. As you develop insight, you’ll come up with your own questions to ask.

I can provide some basic guidance on where to get started in developing a strong pattern of failure (see Table 2.1). Most generally, describe in detail the conditions in which a problem does and does not occur.

All of the questions in Table 2.1 are guides, not directions. Look at one occurrence and many together, when possible, and see what you discover. Again, you are not trying to guess the solution. You are simply trying to understand the facts of how the failure manifests.

A friend of mine renting an old house had been experiencing his computer shutting down occasionally because it temporarily lost power. This had of course been very frustrating as it meant he would lose work or at least be interrupted from whatever he was working on as he went to flip the breaker. He had been “living with it” for a while, but when he lost some important work he got fed up. As he went for the third time into the kitchen to complain of his computer failing, he realized that he was always complaining to the same roommate—and that the roommate was always heating up leftovers in the microwave. As it happened the house had a very large, powerful microwave, and his room was next to the kitchen.

Once my friend had noticed this pattern, he could quickly deduce the answer to this fairly simple problem: The very large microwave might be tripping the breaker when other appliances (and his desktop computer) were all running at the same time. He tested it and saw the trip happen again. He smiled and grabbed an extension cord to move his computer’s supply to his opposite wall. While he and his housemates waited for a less aggressive replacement microwave, he taped over that outlet to make sure he didn’t use it by mistake.