Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Doing something that goes beyond what is required often leads to discovery, and discovery may be a wonderful unintended result.

Many years ago (in the last century), I was involved in an upgrade to an existing system. There were new requirements that required new capabilities. Some of the computing hardware was to be replaced with newer, better, faster, cheaper, etc. Great stuff.

And while we were at it (here it comes), how about replacing some of the other old computing hardware with newer hardware? The old hardware met all requirements. We had spare parts for the old hardware. The old hardware would far outlast the system. Why would anyone replace the old stuff with new stuff? In that (hi)story, we didn’t replace the old hardware and everything worked just fine.

Fast forward to this century and I ran into a similar situation. We had a functioning system. Some of the computing hardware was old. Some of the engineers wanted to replace it with newer hardware. Why?

One of the young engineers told me, “We are tired of the old stuff. You will never be able to hire a new engineers once they see that you are using old, outdated technology. Come on, we are all sick of this.”

Hmmm. This young engineer had several good points. We replaced the old stuff with new stuff.

The performance of the new stuff far exceeded the requirements. We had lots of extra computing power on hand. And then the unintended happened:

We discovered new opportunities.

Discovery is an unintended result. We “discover” things we don’t know exist. We don’t go looking for them, but there they are.

In that (hi)story, we discovered new opportunities. We talked to the system’s users. They liked the opportunities. We expanded and then fulfilled the requirements. The system became more capable and successful—all because some young engineer convinced this old engineer that updating already functioning hardware was needful.

I don’t endorse waste. I endorse fulfilling requirements. There are times, however, when doing more with new stuff provides discovery. And that is usually a good thing.