Sam Gentle.com

Failure

I was actually part of the way through writing a post but I ran over my deadline. I resolved in my last failure to be much more picky about declaring failures as soon as they happen, even if I could probably get away with it. This is part of my defence in depth strategy: minor failures are fine as long as you handle them, but failures in the failure-handling system are not okay.

So what happened this time? I ended up overstretched because my prototypes got a bit out of hand this week. I set myself the goal of doing very small prototypes, but I got really excited by a few of them and ran over time. Fitting that extra time in with the rest of my work was too much and I ended up tired and overstretched. So the proximate cause is the prototypes taking too long.

However, the root cause is all too familiar: I could have recognised the prototypes taking too long, but instead of correcting that minor failure I ignored it. There was a failure in the failure-handling system, and that allowed the minor errors to accrete to the point where they turned into a major one. So I think it's just a matter of diligence, and resisting the urge to gloss over small problems even when it's convenient.

I'm going to build that habit starting with this post, where I failed, but probably only by 15 minutes. Still a failure, though, and still something I can learn from.