Monthly Archives: April 2017

When is cutting corners the right answer?

Glass shelf with a sharp corner and a label saying "caution sharp corner"

Cutting corners is the right answer when your problem is sharp corners

When is cutting corners the right answer?  When the problem is sharp corners.

A key concept in quality engineering is “fail-safe” design.  I’ve written about fail-safe design in the past, regarding software controlled rifles.  This example, a sharp corner, is a much more simple, and visual, example.

In the US, we have lots of litigation. I’m sure this label was applied to the sharp corner to point out the danger to customers. Also, maybe to protect from lawsuits if someone gets injured.  A better solution would be to grind down that corner so it isn’t a hazard.

Fail safe design means to build your systems in a way that, if they fail, they fail in a safe manner.  In this case, if someone bumps into this shelf, they shouldn’t get cut.

Coming back to software, what if you have a cron job that does some cleanup.  What happens if that job fails?  Does it leave data behind which might consume your storage?  Would any of that data be Personally Identifiable?

Using a FMEA – Failure Mode and Effects Analysis is a good method to identify these potential failures and ask, does the system fail in the most safe manner?