[HN Gopher] The Bureaucratic Failure Mode Pattern (2014)
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       The Bureaucratic Failure Mode Pattern (2014)
        
       Author : Melchizedek
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2021-07-29 13:15 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (habitatchronicles.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (habitatchronicles.com)
        
       | denton-scratch wrote:
       | My goodness, that prose is turgid! I stopped reading after two
       | paragraphs full of subordinate clauses and parentheses, and gave
       | up.
        
       | triska wrote:
       | A nice article with many important insights, such as: _" In the
       | extreme case, the cumulative costs of all the checkpoints within
       | an organization can exceed the working resources the organization
       | has available, and forward progress becomes impossible."_
       | 
       | A generalization of this key insight also appears, illustrated
       | with many historical examples, in _The Collapse of Complex
       | Societies_ by Joseph Tainter:
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter
       | 
       | In his book, he outlines how bureaucracy increases in complex
       | societies up to the point they are collapsing under it. The key
       | reason for this collapse is the diminishing marginal return of
       | bureaucracy.
       | 
       | It is my hope that we find a way to prevent societal collapse due
       | to bureaucracy by automating arising tasks cleverly. However,
       | most things I see at the moment, even most computer projects,
       | tend to further increase bureaucracy and even also add new
       | failure modes.
        
         | throwaway1492 wrote:
         | I'd disagree progress becomes impossible, for the simple reason
         | at this point rules and processes start getting bypassed or
         | skipped altogether.
         | 
         | I once had a role in management at a mid size software company.
         | The company was quite stodgy, with a lot of regulations and
         | processes. If I'd wanted to I could have worked a solid 60
         | hours a week keeping up with all the process and procedure
         | changes, and then following them. After attempting just this, I
         | realized in a few weeks I did not want to, so I simply stopped.
         | And guess what? Nothing happened. Of course I heard about a few
         | things that needed to be done, and quickly learned exactly
         | which ten of the hundreds of processes were important; or
         | rather had someone who's job it was to track them.
         | 
         | I continued in a this purely reactive manner, saving myself a
         | lot of work and trouble, and had a really high performing team
         | in the organization. There was an article some weeks ago about
         | the merits of doing nothing, indeed this is why I don't believe
         | this article expresses a valid concern.
        
       | 8note wrote:
       | checkpoints are regression tests against past failures. Without
       | them, somebody else is handling those failures
        
         | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
         | Fossilised procedures are tests against failures which either
         | happened a long time ago or which someone decided _might_
         | happen.
         | 
         | Neither may apply today.
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-29 23:01 UTC)