Problem solving techniques: Insight from goats
We used to raise dairy goats. This insight is from those goats.
If you are flying a plane, and you see a goat eye to eye - there is probably a mountain he is standing on.
Sometimes you see a glitch once in your system. It only happened once. You can’t figure out how to duplicate it. So you decide to release anyway. Not a good idea. You need to figure out how to look harder - or look at it a different way. You are seeing the goat. Watch out for the mountain!
Every day at 5:30 performance goes to a crawl. But you can’t figure it out. Watch out for the mountain! There might be a process that is running way at 5:30…
At Sapias, we sometimes saw trucks that appeared to be in the ocean (I am not mixing metaphors here). The truck shouldn’t be in the ocean. We eventually determined a combination of problems in antennas, and indications from the device about the location accuracy.
We once saw network traffic go out of site. We had a hard time figuring out where the traffic was coming from. But there was a mountain, and we finally tracked it down.
If you see a goat - find the mountain before it finds you.
Jim on July 2nd 2007 in Problem Solving