Delivering The Bad News, Safely

Delivering The Bad News, Safely

Reliability engineering includes delivering bad news. This piece of equipment will fail soon, this design won’t survive outdoor use.

We start early with engineering judgment on design weaknesses. Continue by organizing groups to evaluate and comment on what will likely fail. We test, prod, poke and force failures to occur. Then we tally the actual performance and compare that to the what we hoped.

We are the bearers of bad news all too often.

So how do you avoid the stigma attached to that bad news?

Guilt by Association

“The nature of bad news infects the teller.” Shakespeare

The phrase of ‘don’t kill the messenger,” originated from ancient Greece and Persia where messengers bearing bad news were slain. Likewise, if the message was good the messenger was treated as a hero. In either case, the messenger was not the cause of the news, just relaying a message.

If a prototype fails in an environmental test at nominal temperatures, the design, assembly, the prototype designed and built by others failed. Yet, you know as I do, that letting the program manager about the failure is dangerous. You are not likely to be slain on the spot, yet more likely…