One of the skills they pay me the big bucks<\/strike> medium-sized Euro for at work is assessing the risks of changes going into production. To do it, I’ve become pretty good at evaluating the system that is being changed.<\/p>\n
I could snow you with talk of checklists, metrics, and charts, but really, my most valuable analytical tools are my pattern-matching wetware and my experience. With those two things, I can usually describe the current state of the system and estimate its chances of going horribly wrong in the near future, just based on gut feel.<\/p>\n
Below are my private terms for the various states of computer system health. I use different ones in official reporting. Usually.<\/p>\n
Entropy tells us that, barring intervention, systems tend to move down this sequence. But it’s not a linear progression. For instance, brittle<\/strong> and fragile<\/strong>, are parallel routes to fucked<\/strong>ness. They’re basically two different failure modes: the Big Bad Bang and Death by a Thousand Cuts.<\/p>\n The applicability of these categories to other matters is left as an exercise for the reader.<\/p>\n Cross-posted on Making Light<\/a>, where any comments will live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the skills they pay me the big bucks medium-sized Euro for at work is assessing the risks of changes going into production. To do it, I’ve become pretty good at evaluating the system that is being changed. I could snow you with talk of checklists, metrics, and charts, but really, my most valuable … Continue reading Entomosemantics, or, how to talk about bugs<\/span>