Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Planning is for doing

biggestfish.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 62 posts

Re: Planning is for doing

#11

Post by antiframe »

guiriduro wrote: post #2

The author thinks the parable they heard concerning silly traffic priority negotiation would be too horribly impractical to occur in real life; but they clearly have never been on a winding (mostly) single lane coastal road in Southern Italy, e.g. Amalfi. Silly and impractical negotiation between drivers is exactly how it works, or rather, doesn't. Although in this case it manifests the complete absence of planning r…

I understood the parable differently than you. The Amalfi coast is not the same as a small town main street in the United States. The crux of the parable is that planning and negotiation is useful when it its cost is outweighed by the benefit and not useful if it's more costly than the gains.

Re: Planning is for doing

#12

Post by Cerium »

infogulch wrote: post #10
exmadscientist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> question like "Will we want to change our action in some way based on the result of this test?" This is my absolute favorite question. I am continually amazed at how much crap it can cut through.

My favorite when making long term decisions is "Do we need to make the decision between these choices now , or can we proceed keeping all the choices open and make the decision later?" Sometimes there's a belabored debate between two choices and answering this question can reveal that the choices don't have to branch right now, that they have (or could have) a shared 'path prefix', enabling us to make the choice late…

The optimal time to make a decision is the moment before it hits the critical path. Where I work we make this actionable by saying to defer decisions and pull forward unknowns.

Re: Planning is for doing

#13

Post by jameshart »

exmadscientist wrote: post #6
ElevenLathe wrote: post #3

I work in crisis management, sometimes on tense, hours-long outage calls. Very often, engineers or others on the call will say things like "It would be nice to run test $x before we move forward." It basically always pays to ask a counter-question like "Will we want to change our action in some way based on the result of this test?" Often the answer is no, so we can skip doing the test and get to remediation faster.…

> question like "Will we want to change our action in some way based on the result of this test?" This is my absolute favorite question. I am continually amazed at how much crap it can cut through.

Agreed. This question is a superpower. Not just 'the result of this test', this applies to all kinds of questions.

It's also relevant when people ask for ill-specified 'dashboards', or 'reports'.

Will what we do change substantially based on what we see on these dashboards? If not, why make them? And if so... can we just automate that behavior so we don't have to rely on someone noticing the dashboard?

Re: Planning is for doing

#14

Post by mordechai9000 »

anotherevan wrote: post #9

The driving parable reminded me of my one and only time driving in the USA. The thing that absolutely did my head in was the intersections with four-way stop signs. There was no clear indication of who had right of way which I would have thought would cause a lot of collisions. It just seemed like the biggest bully goes first. Give me roundabouts any day.

It's first come, first served, so you have to note who is already there when you pull up. If two cars arrive at the same time, you yield to the car on your right. Most of the time it works fairly well. If a car goes out of turn because they weren't paying attention, it's usually just a minor annoyance.

I agree, roundabouts are better.

Re: Planning is for doing

#15

Post by bitwize »

anotherevan wrote: post #9

The driving parable reminded me of my one and only time driving in the USA. The thing that absolutely did my head in was the intersections with four-way stop signs. There was no clear indication of who had right of way which I would have thought would cause a lot of collisions. It just seemed like the biggest bully goes first. Give me roundabouts any day.

The rule for four-way stops is simple: Right-of-way is established in order of arrival at the intersection. First to arrive at the stop sign can go first, followed by the second, etc.

Not everybody follows the rule, and technically they're breaking traffic laws by doing so.

And you're right. I prefer roundabouts too, they're objectively safer. Massachusetts has a fair few roundabouts, but other parts of the country seem to abhor them.

Re: Planning is for doing

#16

Post by kkfx »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #3

I work in crisis management, sometimes on tense, hours-long outage calls. Very often, engineers or others on the call will say things like "It would be nice to run test $x before we move forward." It basically always pays to ask a counter-question like "Will we want to change our action in some way based on the result of this test?" Often the answer is no, so we can skip doing the test and get to remediation faster.…

The issue came when people decide that "emergency" and "normal operations" should be the same. In an emergency such corner cutting approach might allow for quicker resolutions since in most cases emergencies happen in a relatively charted/pre-computed territory, in ordinary condition impede a proper development resulting in much more emergencies, and more and more larger/tough.

Unfortunately too many fails to appreciate complexity so "if something work" it must work anytime, at any scale, for any scenarios and so on. Teaching complexity IME generally fail.

Re: Planning is for doing

#17

Post by spaetzleesser »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #3

I work in crisis management, sometimes on tense, hours-long outage calls. Very often, engineers or others on the call will say things like "It would be nice to run test $x before we move forward." It basically always pays to ask a counter-question like "Will we want to change our action in some way based on the result of this test?" Often the answer is no, so we can skip doing the test and get to remediation faster.…

“It basically always pays to ask a counter-question like "Will we want to change our action in some way based on the result of this test?"”

I like to ask this too. This question is also very useful in a medical context. They often order tests where the outcome doesn’t really matter for the path forward.

Re: Planning is for doing

#18

Post by taneq »

jameshart wrote: post #13
exmadscientist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> question like "Will we want to change our action in some way based on the result of this test?" This is my absolute favorite question. I am continually amazed at how much crap it can cut through.

Agreed. This question is a superpower. Not just 'the result of this test', this applies to all kinds of questions. It's also relevant when people ask for ill-specified 'dashboards', or 'reports'. Will what we do change substantially based on what we see on these dashboards? If not, why make them? And if so... can we just automate that behavior so we don't have to rely on someone noticing the dashboard?

A related principle is that often you’re really not blocked on things you think you’re blocked on. Waiting on that part / component / email response? Pretend you just got it. Chances are the first thing, or even first few things, you’d do didn’t require the thing you were waiting for.

Re: Planning is for doing

#19

Post by DeathArrow »

>The common way of determining right of way on roads is some combination of right of way, stop signs, and traffic lights. None of these take into account the needs of the drivers, so should characterize them as unjust.

In modern societies having equal rights is 'unjust'.

Re: Planning is for doing

#20

Post by erikpukinskis »

The author is suggesting replacing a bad plan (everyone discuss each intersection) with another bad plan (just drive however you like).

(And as an aside, stopping at each intersection to discuss is not ideal, but at least no one is going to die.)

Anyway, I’m unconvinced. Most of the planning failures I’ve seen came about because people were bad at planning, not because they were talking too much. I’ve seen the opposite (not enough talking, not enough looking ahead) far more often.

I do like the slogan though. Planning is for doing.

Post reply on HN