Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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I'm halfway through the article right now (thanks to Zealotux's cache link). Don't be discouraged by that 500 error - it seems to be a really solid piece of writing.

EDIT: a TL;DR:

Topic is failures/successes in complex projects/operations, like construction, surgery, or manufacturing.

The article first proposes that the usual way of evaluating safety - by focusing on failure cases - is insufficient, and a more productive approach would be to focus on the success cases.

The article then observes that the following is found in both the failure and success cases:

  Workarounds
  Shortcuts
  Violations
  Guidelines not followed
  Errors and miscalculations
  Unfindable people or medical instruments
  Unreliable measurements
  User-unfriendly technologies
  Organizational frustrations
  Supervisory shortcomings

Therefore, it is suggested that focusing on those issues isn't going to reduce failures further. The article then follows with a list and description of things the authors observed to be more frequent in successful than failed projects:

  Diversity of opinion and the possibility to voice dissent.
  Keeping a discussion on risk alive and not taking past success as a guarantee for safety.
  Deference to expertise.
  Ability to say stop.
  Broken down barriers between hierarchies and departments.
  Don’t wait for audits or inspections to improve.
  Pride of workmanship

Overall, a pretty interesting article. I await comments from people in the field :).

The article perfectly reflects my experience (building/construction sites).

The norms and procedures - even if followed to the letter[1] as much as possible - are not enough to avoid serious accidents, and as a matter of fact they might even be the source of problems[2].

What really counts in my experience is professionality, communication between workers and management, continuous attention and "common sense" (something that is not very common, unfortunately).

[1] In theory safety in the design is one of the main points of the Law, but in practice it is never or very rarely properly implemented. In theory a safety engineer should have the powers, besides advising, to alter the design and construction method proposing alternate, safer designs or construction methods, in practice these end up as being slower or much costlier and they are discarded.

[2] As an example relatively recent norms make obligatory to use a safety harness hooked to the basket of lifting platforms. This is a good thing, as it prevents the worker in the basket to fall out of it if there is a sudden bump when the platform moves or however the arm gets hit by something, BUT, on the other hand, if for any reason the platform collapses or tips over, the worker secured to the basket by the harness is more likely to be more severely injured.

> Diversity of opinion and the possibility to voice dissent.

> Keeping a discussion on risk alive and not taking past success as a guarantee for safety.

> Deference to expertise.

> Ability to say stop.

> Broken down barriers between hierarchies and departments.

> Don’t wait for audits or inspections to improve.

> Pride of workmanship

I love your list, and would like to see how well it would hold up when you compare start-up failures and successes against these criteria. Will definitely use this, thank you very much!

It's not my list, it's the authors' :). Don't forget to review the original document, as each of those points has some commentary attached to it, explaining what exactly they mean by those phrases.

Thank you anyway, and yes I have read the article.

Incidentally, the list is similar to what Google (re)-discovered when researching what makes teams succeed [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-lear...

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