“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein.
True that simplicity, in and of itself, reduces risk of failure. But simplicity also reduces functionality. I know well the adages of simplicity in software. But simple software is only useful for simple requirements. As for the articles, they are interesting and worth a read. Here’s a number of points: While software in general is a complex system, it is one with a lot less variability (code paths not withstanding) than the complex human / machine / organisational systems being talked about. Consider life itself as a complex system with its variability. (I don’t think at this point we can get more complex.) It seems to work well, regularly, and with only quite rare catastrophic failures. Software is maintained such that it “tends” to get more stable over time. (in spite of an average 70% error rate for software changes and fixes). As an example, look at z/OS: evolving for some 35 odd years, through generations of hardware, communications and disk access protocols. z/OS allow you to do hardware maintenance without affecting running services and applications! All that being said, I did once injure a human being with some integration software I wrote. And there certainly were a lot of human errors that contributed to the injury. My software worked correctly but I made a further complication to it to allow priorities on integration messages in an effort to reduce the probability of the same set of errors occurring. Enjoyed the article(s). Enjoy the holidays and „Guten Rutsch!“ Ben Chernys Senior Software Architect Description: logoSthInc-sm Canada / Deutschland Mobile: +49 171 380 2329 GMT + 1 + [ DST ] Email: Ben.Chernys_AT_softwaretoolhouse.com Web: <http://www.softwaretoolhouse.com/> www.softwaretoolhouse.com We are a BMC Technology Alliance Partner Check out Software Tool House's free Diary Editor and out Freebies Section for a ITSM 7.6.04 and 8.0.0 Fields spreadsheet. Meta-Update, our premium ARS Data tool, lets you automate your imports, migrations, in no time at all, without programming, without staging forms, without merge workflow. <http://www.softwaretoolhouse.com/> http://www.softwaretoolhouse.com/ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of matt.laurenc...@gmail.com Sent: December-21-12 09:09 To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: Good article on Root Cause ** ** Simplicity definitely solves many issues (or prevents to create others ;) Wishing you all a great Holiday Season! ~ Matt Laurenceau Sr Community Ambassador, BMC Communities http://bit.ly/MattProfiles Skype: matt.laurenceau ----- Reply message ----- From: "arslist" <arsl...@danielbloom.ca> To: <arslist@ARSLIST.ORG> Subject: Good article on Root Cause Date: Thu, Dec 20, 2012 22:59 Thanks John, Fascinating reading! Pretend it took me until tomorrow(Friday) to read it … My comment is tangential: “Complex systems fail”, therefore try to keep things simple. “I am simple minded, keep it simple” is how I usually put it; what I mean is that the simplest solution is usually the best. [for those that recognize it, yes a derivation from Occam’s Razor] If I can find a way to do things with one new form, a few active links, and one filter for a data call versus major modifications I will Dan From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of John Sundberg Sent: December 20, 2012 4:23 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Good article on Root Cause ** http://www.theitsmreview.com/2012/12/railways-derailments/ -- John Sundberg Kinetic Data, Inc. "Your Business. Your Process." Save The Date! Second Annual KEG (Kinetic Enthusiasts Group) Feb. 25th - March 1st in Denver, CO. For more information click here - <http://www.kineticdata.com/Events/KEG.html> KEG 651-556-0930 I john.sundb...@kineticdata.com <http://www.kineticdata.com/> www.kineticdata.com I <http://community.kineticdata.com/> community.kineticdata.com _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years"
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