The author focuses on solving tough problems, the type of
problem where you could probably guess a lot of possible causes for the problem
but have a very hard time arriving at a solution. The nine key points the
author focuses on are:
1) Stop Guessing - pretty self-explanatory, but basically,
when presented with a difficult problem do not waste time guessing at solutions
or hinder yourself from discovering the root cause by guessing at what the
solution should be.
2) Smell the Problem - funny name, but the idea being that
you should really try and figure out what is actually wrong by observation
rather than guessing.
3) Embrace Your Ignorance - as applied here it is chiefly
used to encourage one to ask basic questions without making assumptions, this
helps in the event your assumptions are allowing you to miss something.
4) Know What Problem You're Solving - again
self-explanatory, but basically, make sure that you do not get distracted from
your present problem and go down unhelpful tangents that distract you.
5) Dig Into the Fundamentals - determine what the
fundamental variables of your problem are so that you can better focus on
actual causes, this should be done as high level variables and then dig into
only the ones that are off spec.
6) Don't Rely on Experts - rely on experts for their
knowledge and insight about how something works or something you do not
understand but work with them and do not rely on them to solve the problem for
you based on their knowledge.
7) Believe in a Simple Solution - most problems have a
simple solution underneath a difficult search to understand a root cause.
8) Make Fact-Based Decisions - this ties into 2) and 3)
above heavily as well as 5) and 6) but the idea is that opinions and guesses
should not be used to figure out what the root cause is, rather only use facts.
9) Stay on Target - an amalgamation of 4), 5), and 7) by
keeping on target until you find your root cause and your simple solution, do
not go down variable paths or add complexity that you do not need to.
All in most likely a good book that I will attempt to put
into practice, the ideas seem pretty decent and logical.
My one frustration with the book is that all the information
above is frequently conveyed with anecdotal evidence, which is fine, except
that the author frequently gives a very tertiary view of what all went into
solving the problem and provides very skeletal anecdotes that may be a lot more
interesting if there was more meat on them.
Or mainly I just get frustrated when someone starts telling
me a technically interesting story, then skips all the promising details to
come, and states: "we solved the problem, the end."
