You never get credit for averting a disaster, only for mounting a rescue operation once it’s in motion. At least that’s my experience from decades working in and around software development.
I’ve seen the debate play out time and time again: How much time and effort do you invest upfront in planning, analysis, quality assurance, risk mitigation? How much is enough? How much is too much? What’s the cost of averting a problem versus fixing the problem after implementation? We all know it costs more to fix it after Go Live, but was it worth the cost of avoiding, if the problem never materializes?
This is similar to the debate we are having across the world today. What is the cost of averting a catastrophic surge on our medical resources? How much of our wealth are we willing to give up to save lives? Does it depend on the number of lives? We’re investing up front in “flattening the curve”, but will we believe that the costs were worth it when it’s all over?
If a software Go Live is a success, no alarms are raised, no high impact problem reports are sent up the chain of command, no emergency meetings are called, or ‘business continuity plans’ activated. There’s a celebration cake, some nice words of thanks to the dedicated team, some photos taken and everyone moves on to the next project. It obviously wasn’t that complex or that challenging — there were no outside witnesses to the heroic work that went on behind the scenes. The impact of the quality checks and testing on the final smooth implementation can get lost in the final assessment. Remember Y2K twenty years ago?
The projected COVID-19 deaths in the US are gradually dropping as we wrap up several weeks of Stay At Home orders across most of the nation. This is fantastic news! We achieved the objectives set forth by #flattenthecurve initiatives. This is the result of bold public officials making tough decisions — these are the unsung heroes. And, I can already hear rumblings and second-guessings as to whether this was needed, precisely because the projections have dropped. Wait, don’t forget, that was the whole point. Questions are being asked as to whether the cost to the economy was worth it. This is sounding familiar.
If a software Go Live is a disaster, a hotshot SWAT team swoops in to the rescue. These saviors are treated like royalty — their heroic work is on display for all to see. Heroes are born that become legends of department lore. The unheard voices that had asked for more time to check, review, and test get buried or take the blame. Lessons learned are captured, After Action Reviews are conducted, and improvement task forces formed. We don’t want to repeat this ever again … until we do.
We’ve witnessed COVID-19 disasters in many places across the globe. There were many unheard voices trying to issue warnings and caution. Some were buried and some may be looked to for blame before it’s all over. New heroes have been born. We’re doing military style flyovers to honor our doctors, nurses and medical professionals. Infectious disease experts, scrounging for research funds, mostly hidden in their labs until this point, have found themselves on the international stage. They are getting fan mail … and some hate mail too, I”m sure. I hope they have their grants written so they can strike while the iron’s hot. We want to be better prepared next time … until we forget.
Reading about the 1918 Spanish flu has fascinated me the past few weeks. As with software projects, it would seem that we do repeat mistakes and we do forget. The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel seems to have got it right when he said “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
What will the future say about the decisions made and the resulting consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic? I’m sure we’ll already know a lot more in a year from now. However, wouldn’t you love to come back in 100 years to find out what history will write about the year 2020?
Having enjoyed many May 1st’s outside the US as a day off work or school in honor of the International Worker’s Day, it’s always on my mind, when the calendar flips over to May. The US has designated a different day in September as Labor Day, however the origins of this international holiday come from an event in the US in 1886, in Chicago.
My most intense brush with disasters was the 2017 Harvey flood. Water filled our house and rocked our world. We were stuck in the upstairs of our house for a couple of days and part of that was without power, but we felt bizarrely upbeat about things. In retrospect, I’m sure we were just in shock.
Today was my official coming out day. It’s the day I’m marking in the calendar as “Started wearing mask in public“. I finally finished my hand-crafted creations. They do have a pouch for a filter, but are otherwise quite unremarkable. My housemates have been mostly polite about them, excepting a few comments about being uneven, or baggy, or weird smelling. I know these are not in their longer-term wardrobe plans — I’ve seen their orders for more colorful alternatives in our Amazon account.
All four of my grandparents lived through the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic in Minnesota and Michigan, but I never heard a peep about any of this until many years after they had passed. It never came up. I never asked any question that would have lead there. What kid asks a question like “Grandma, have you ever lived through a pandemic?” I’m sure I thought pandemics were a thing that died out with the bubonic plague in the middle ages, if I was even that aware.
I went to enter something on the May family calendar in the pantry and realized that I had not yet turned the page to April. This is a litmus test of activity in our house. The master household calendar, the director of traffic in our lives, the synchronizer of all family comings and goings has not been needed. I haven’t referred to, or written in it since March, which ended 26 days ago.
Today I’d like to introduce Caitlin Campbell, my future daughter-in-law, a high school Physics teacher in Houston. She has kindly agreed to share some of her experiences since schools moved classrooms into a virtual world and cancelled everything else that couldn’t be done virtually. Much gratitude and kudos to Caitlin for taking on this project while also taking good care of her many “kids” as she likes to call them. She shares a different side of what many 2020 Seniors are experiencing. Most of us reading this piece cannot imagine the impact of a canceled Senior year when you come from a different slice of life.
I often brainstorming ideas for my next topic, before narrowing down what I will write about. Today, I started listing reflection questions that have been dancing around in my head. Rather than picking one to write about, I decided to just put them all out there today. They could serve as food for thought for others. Here’s my list of starting points. The next step would be to take one
The Coronaviary 