So Challenger had a 'just so' story involving o-rings and Columbia has a 'just so' story involving powerpoint?
Or space travel is hard and people will die?
Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
51–60 of 135 posts
Re: Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
#52The app saved 7 billion from watching crap-quality whiteboard and traditional docs, and we're still reading about the 7 triggered ones.
Re: Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
#53This is a rehash of the claim Edward Tufte.made about the Challenger crash, and it is doing the same thing: take something that was, at most, one of the many contributing factors (but the one of most interest to the person making the claim) and exaggerate its significance out of all proportion. It is not a helpful way to present data if the goal is to understand what went wrong in the hope of avoiding making the same mistake in future.
Re: Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
#54No, the NASA officials are the ones that killed seven people. Is there audio from the presentation? If you are meeting with some group about something that is life or death, you sit your butt down and ask questions until you get the actual situation. They didn't do it for Challenger and they failed to do it for Columbia. You are in charge, the decision is yours and you are responsible. On a side note, the whole first…
Your post reads like one of those classic "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" slogans. Sure, but guns make it a whole lot easier. No one is innocent here - there's plenty of blame to go around.
One of the key skills in being a senior engineer, is knowing how to communicate clearly with managers and decision-makers who don't have the same level of technical knowledge that you do. Communication is an extremely imperfect and lossy medium - figuring out how to get the most salient message across clearly, is a hard-to-master but vital skill. This article shows exactly why.
Re: Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the PPT slide is at fault for the fact that the most relevant piece of information (this is 600x bigger than we have tested) got lost. The decision, and even the way in which the meeting to make the decision was held, is not on PPT. But, it was the one and only purpose of a PPT slide to communicate information in a way that makes it easier to understand, otherwise we would just use plain txt files. A plain tx…
How would a plain txt file have helped? As the person writing the txt/ppt/whatever it's your job to put the emphasis on the important part: the 600x difference. In text this means puting that at the beginning, in the title and in bold. The same is true in PPT, you have to outline the important stuff. It has to be visible at a glance. File formats don't solve lack of communication and listening skills.
Certainly not. The fact that plain txt would have been better than this, was meant to convey how poorly the format worked for the intended purpose (highlighting the most important information).
I wasn't saying a plain txt file was a solution; I was saying that even plain txt, a very low-power format, would have been better than this, and since the ONLY PURPOSE of a PPT is to help you format things, this was a failure. Certainly no format will solve lack of communication, but I see better communication in Hacker News comments than I see in PowerPoints, and I think that says something about the value of PowerPoint.
Re: Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
#56No, the NASA officials are the ones that killed seven people. Is there audio from the presentation? If you are meeting with some group about something that is life or death, you sit your butt down and ask questions until you get the actual situation. They didn't do it for Challenger and they failed to do it for Columbia. You are in charge, the decision is yours and you are responsible. On a side note, the whole first…
Clearly the mission controllers bear some responsibility, but I disagree with diverting blame from the creators of the PowerPoint. The PowerPoint displays extremely clouded thinking. The title is: "Review of Test Data Indicates Conservatism for Tile Penetration." What the heck does that even mean? An unclear title is a very strong indicator of unclear thinking about the point being made. Further, there is a relativel…
Just because you don't understand the jargon does not make it incorrect/unclear, have you ever worked at NASA?
Re: Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s definitely audio from all those meetings. You can hear the mission manager plow right through the issues with bureaucratic ease. They’ve seen something similar before and even though it was unexplained, because they’ve seen it, they think it’s a known issue. You want to blame her for it and shake her out of it as you hear her say it, but it wasn’t malicious. I believe the mission manager even had a spouse who…
True, it is easy to be wise after the event. However, the management culture at NASA, which was also responsible for the loss of Challenger, and something Richard Feynman also criticized, did not change. This lead to managers ignoring engineers' warnings about the foam strikes on Columbia, and also rejecting requests for high resolution images. This is exactly the same culture which ignored engineers' warnings about…
> Not firing or disciplining these managers will cause similar disasters in future.
I think the quote is something like "Why would I fire them, we just lost X lives and dollars training them?"
Re: Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
#58No, the NASA officials are the ones that killed seven people. Is there audio from the presentation? If you are meeting with some group about something that is life or death, you sit your butt down and ask questions until you get the actual situation. They didn't do it for Challenger and they failed to do it for Columbia. You are in charge, the decision is yours and you are responsible. On a side note, the whole first…
Your post reads like one of those classic "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" slogans. Sure, but guns make it a whole lot easier. No one is innocent here - there's plenty of blame to go around. One of the key skills in being a senior engineer, is knowing how to communicate clearly with managers and decision-makers who don't have the same level of technical knowledge that you do. Communication is an extremely…
I gotta wonder what business a manager has being in a decision making position if they can't understand the summarized technicals of those below.
Re: Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
#59No, the NASA officials are the ones that killed seven people. Is there audio from the presentation? If you are meeting with some group about something that is life or death, you sit your butt down and ask questions until you get the actual situation. They didn't do it for Challenger and they failed to do it for Columbia. You are in charge, the decision is yours and you are responsible. On a side note, the whole first…
There’s definitely audio from all those meetings. You can hear the mission manager plow right through the issues with bureaucratic ease. They’ve seen something similar before and even though it was unexplained, because they’ve seen it, they think it’s a known issue. You want to blame her for it and shake her out of it as you hear her say it, but it wasn’t malicious. I believe the mission manager even had a spouse who…
> I’ve always found it fascinating how organizational structure and pressure can take really brilliant and motivated people and beat them into making such poor decisions.
I get your sentiment, but there are more stories to tell in NASA events. Robert Trivers wrote a book [1] about his research on human behavior, specifically, how self-deception plays a role in the event.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Folly-Fools-Logic-Deceit-Self-Decepti...
Re: Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people
#60The authors of the slide either lacked the ability to analyze problems, or lacked the ability to communicate their opinions, or were intentionally obscuring their opinions. Which of these is the more likely explanation? I've seen experienced engineers incapable of expressing their thoughts clearly. But I've also seen well-established organizations that encourage hiding your opinions behind a wall of bullshit.
Have you considered the possibility that in some cases it is basically forbidden from expressing opinions. These guys were tasked to conduct and summarize their studies not opine on the decision to be made, that violates separation of duties and an expressed opinion leads to questions of diligence.