[SystemSafety] Safety Culture redux (David Green)

[Les Chambers]

Todd

Can I put an opposing view? 

That in eliminating the word "bug" you will not eliminate the problem. The objective here is to change people's behaviour. The transition you want is careless to careful.

Bug is a metaphor. People are influenced by metaphors. If you don't like bug think of a better metaphor. How about: "murder suspect". Has it occurred to anyone that we've had all these definitions for decades yet we still have "bugs". Further refinement of our dictionaries is not the solution. More compelling metaphors are the key.

 

I digress: back in the day I wrote a control task that operators would use infrequently to recover from an anomalous situation in a chemical reactor. Because they didn't use it often they tended to forget its name. So I renamed it "sex". That got their attention. "Got a problem? You need sex! ... damn right "

 

Culture change is hard. Left alone people will take the least disruptive option. Discomfort is necessary. We have to be forced into it. A dictionary has never caused me any discomfort. The clear and present danger that my negligence might destroy property and kill people did. In my experience, by far the most effective tool for culture change in code quality is the code review. Not only does it focus on improving the quality of the work product but it instils cultural norms in all the participants. The current thinking is that culture change occurs by people working together. So you need to give them a reason to work together. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against using precise terms in engineering reports. But recognise that we're not discussing the beauty of an engineering report here. We're dealing with preventive action on the human psyche. It's a random and messy place where influence happens through metaphor backed up by action. Start reading here:

 

http://shu.bg/tadmin/upload/storage/161.pdf

 

Les

 

From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Todd Carpenter
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 3:03 AM
To: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Safety Culture redux (David Green)

 

+1 for the 2018 plan to eliminate the word "bug" from our collective vocabularies. I'm in.




Can we fix these issues easily? Sure. I recommend, as usual, the definitions in
https://causalis.com/90-publications/99-downloads/DefinitionsForSafetyEngineering.pdf
 
PBL


Why have I not seen this paper before now? I've been using (and mandating on my programs) the Laprie taxonomy since it came out. Your definitions are what it missed. One thing that is particularly nice about how you framed these terms is that I can easily map them into the vernacular used in avionics, medical device, and industrial control domains. Sure, there will be collisions against many of the standards, but those standards are often imprecise, as you pointed out.

I can start discussions with, "is this what you really mean by that term you just used?" 

[sound of typing as I distribute it to several teams...]

Thank you! 
-TC 

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