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chronicles

15
Aug
Friday Fun: The Great Corporate Cargo Cult

Friday Fun: The Great Corporate Cargo Cult

The expression cargo cult entered Western vocabulary through observations of religious and social movements in Melanesia, particularly around and after the Second World War.
9 min read
13
Aug
Wednesday Reality: Engineering Begins Where Reality Refuses to Cooperate

Wednesday Reality: Engineering Begins Where Reality Refuses to Cooperate

Engineering begins with an acceptance that reality imposes conditions the designer does not control.
11 min read
11
Aug
Monday Myth: Small Teams Move Faster

Monday Myth: Small Teams Move Faster

In 1989, Volvo opened a car factory at Uddevalla on Sweden's west coast that looked strangely unlike the factories which had come to define twentieth-century manufacturing.
12 min read
08
Aug
Friday Fun: The KPI Wildlife Reserve

Friday Fun: The KPI Wildlife Reserve

The Reserve boasted one of the richest concentrations of corporate wildlife ever documented. Decades of careful conservation had produced an ecosystem of extraordinary diversity, where every important metric enjoyed legal protection regardless of its relationship with the surrounding environment.
3 min read
06
Aug
The Humility of Reliable Systems

The Humility of Reliable Systems

Reality has never cared how confident the system felt before the lights went out.
8 min read
04
Aug
Monday Myth: Performance Comes from Power

Monday Myth: Performance Comes from Power

True Engineers rarely optimise machines because they admire elegance. They optimise economics.
4 min read
02
Aug
Friday Fun: The Committee That Replaced the Thermometer

Friday Fun: The Committee That Replaced the Thermometer

The first industrial revolution did not merely require bigger machines. It required machines that behaved predictably. Steam engines demanded repeatable boiler pressures. Steel mills demanded consistent furnace temperatures.
4 min read
30
Jul
Wednesday Reality :The Assembly Line Does not Care Who Worked Hardest

Wednesday Reality :The Assembly Line Does not Care Who Worked Hardest

Systems possess no mechanism for rewarding effort. They reveal only what successfully passes through them.
4 min read
28
Jul
Monday Myth: "Our Application Is Complex"

Monday Myth: "Our Application Is Complex"

Perhaps software never suffered from an unusual abundance of complexity. Perhaps it suffered from an unusual willingness to admire it.
6 min read
26
Jul
Friday Fun: The Corporate Weather Office

Friday Fun: The Corporate Weather Office

The Corporate Weather Office occupied the fourth floor of the Ministry because weather had, over time, acquired considerable strategic importance.
4 min read