Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

This solution didn’t scale, so we stopped using it when it hit its limit. Perhaps the actual explanation is that we lost interest in this solution, so we stopped using it when we became tire of it.

There are many occasions when a new system works when it is new. Everyone is excited. The new system does things the old system did not do for us. This is great. Let’s all use it.

Months or days or hours later, fizzle replaces sizzle.

Scale: that is the answer. The new solution didn’t scale. It worked as a pilot project or an initial release (the term people like nowadays is MVP or Minimum Viable Product). When more and more people put in more and more data and had more and more demands, the new solution simply couldn’t handle the heavier load. It was nice, but not sufficient.

Another answer: we lost interest. It seems that we really didn’t need the new solution. We probably didn’t need the old solution much, either. It seems that we didn’t have a problem that needed a solution. When we quit using both the new and old solutions, no one complained to us. Hmmm. What were we doing?

New solution? Old solution? This is an example of “solution probleming.” That is the opposite of problem solving. In solution probleming, someone finds a solution or technique or an implementation to a new idea. This is great fun. There must be a problem somewhere that this solution solves, right? Huh?

Sometimes solution probleming works great wonders. See, e.g., the smart phone. Most of the time—fizzle.

“The new solution didn’t scale” is a good explanation. It is the type of explanation that brings small nods of sufficient agreement at meetings where important nod-ders meet. No one is fired and no one is criticized.

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