Drift into Failure, by Sidney Dekker, is one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read in a while.
“Thought provoking” is usually a shorthand used by buttered-up friends of the author to mean “I agree” or “he/she provided a great blurb for my dust jacket and now I’m returning the favour”.
But in this case, I found that the book provoked a lot of thought on my part. It tied to a lot of other books I’ve read in the past year or so, some of which I’ll name check.
So … what’s it about?
Dekker discusses how complex systems ‘fail’ in unforeseen ways. He characterises some of these failures as ‘drifts’. The system didn’t visibly zoom towards failure; there was no massive perturbation, no onrushing catastrophe, not even dark clouds on the horizon. In a drift-failure, the failure just happens, and only afterwards is there any chance of diagnosing the whys and hows.
Drift essentially cross two fields of work. The first is reliability / failure studies and the second is complex systems. I’m not very familiar with reliability studies except through a Chinese-whispers version that has been transmitted via software operations literature. I feel that I have a more-than-nodding acquaintance with systems theory through a uni course and my own reading in that area.
To a reader unfamiliar with either body of thought, this book might be a bit difficult. Dekker isn’t really addressing the book to the layperson, it’s really addressed to practitioners reliability/failure field. Dekker’s ultimate hypothesis is that a “Newtonian-Cartesian” approach to failure does not and cannot address failures in complex systems.
If you’re not from the reliability field, Dekker’s writing is a bit like being an atheist at a theological debate. Interesting, but a little hard to follow in parts. But boy does he have lots of points to make.
I respectfully disagree
I don’t think Dekker quite nails his case down. For the rest of the review I will try to explain why. Hang on, because it’s a long, circuitous ride.
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