If you ever want to discover the weaknesses in some defense, all you need to do is hire a focus group of toddlers.
My wife and I currently have two things that don’t mix well—a toddler and stairs. The toddler toddles around, and her fascination with the stairs leads me to believe that she wishes she couldn’t toddle around and will do anything to remove that capability from herself.
We have the common countermeasure of a gate contraption, but we also have other children who sometimes forget to close the gate. And, of course, there’s going to be some ham-fisted way to relate this to software development, so feel free to mentally substitute “production bug” for “leaving the gate open.”
When we see the toddler make it onto the stairs, everyone is pretty quick about going and either spotting her for a walk up the stairs or picking her up and putting her down elsewhere. That’s probably the bare minimum. If we couldn’t be bothered to do that, then we’d have serious problems. I’d rate this as what it takes to score a D. And, of course, no one likes doing this because it’s an interruption.
A C team would put systems in place to notice the gate is open and close the gate whenever they notice that condition. Still an interruption, but it will be fewer interruptions and the first-level failure condition is far less risky than failing to notice an attempt to toddle up the stairs.
A B team would start to wonder why the gate is being left open in the first place and maybe train everyone on the importance of closing the gate, perhaps putting up visible reminders in a noticeable place. Maybe they’d designate a rotation, where for some time period a single person is responsible for “gate duty” and shouldn’t do anything else that would distract from ensuring the gate is closed. In theory then, everyone else would be able to do whatever they were doing and trust toddler will continue to toddle.
What do you think an A team would do?
