Oops: Learning from the incident you didn't have

learningfromincidents.io

72 points·mooreds··6 comments

> trying to learn how to keep your system healthy by only studying its failure is like trying to learn how to keep your marriage healthy by only studying divorces

Of course, you need to study both: not an XOR situation. When married, you collect data points, ask around (i.e. friends and family), ask others why their marriage fell apart; at the same time, you ask them what helps their relationships thrive. Understanding _both_ failures and successes are equally important.

For longer than we've been alive, factories have typically posted signs with "X Days Since a Time Lost Accident".

I've more recently seen signs with "X Days Since a Near Miss Incident".

This "Log Of Surprise Incidents" is the next step in the evolution, and is a good one.

Seems like definitely a good idea to build up a history of "We did X and expected Y, but got Z instead. Why?"

This is a step on the euphemism treadmill, changing the name of "incident" to "surprise"?

Does "OOPS" stand for anything in this article? It's uppercased but never defined.

I think it stands for OOPerational Surprise.

I'm going to assume it refers to "Ops" (as in "operations") and is intended as a pun ("oops" is what you typically say after making a mistake or causing an accident).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com