I reminisce when I was working in IT, my team was managing a system for The Co-operative Bank of Kenya.
It was a very complex system with TONS of moving parts.
Very difficult to manage.
Well, one day, we had a small bug in the system.
It was very small.
So small to a point where we thought it was no biggie.
Decided to ignore it.
4 Months Later
Time passes by.
I'm sleeping on a Saturday morning until I get a call at 6:40 am.
It's my manager.
He says 'Trilston, we need you at work ASAP. We have a zulu!'
A zulu is when our system is in a critical state.
On the verge of failure. This causes our company to miss deadlines & clients to get pissed.
This was bad.
We ended up working a fu漏k ton the next week.
12 hours a day with the business analysts, systems engineers, infrastructure engineers etc to find the root cause.
After a few weeks, we found out what happened.
'What happened bro?'
You remember that little bug that we decided to ignore a few months back?
'Ya.'
Well, that bug had compounded over time & turned into a freaking monster.
That was the reason our system almost collapsed....
The butterfly effect gives you the concepts that a flap of a butterfly wings can add up, compound exponentially & lead to a tornado on the other side of the world.
This is non linear thinking.
We often ignore the little things.
But it is the little things which lead to the big things.
I was going to not write the article today because I had to leave town.
But I was like.. nah... it's a little thing.
With a big result.
Remember the butterfly effect when you sleep on little things.
Whether you believe it or not, you have to see the effects.
Machines & humans have certain similarities.
It's like if we can learn how a machine functions or destructs, we can learn a little bit about ourselves in the process.
That day of covering up the small bug led to a zulu.
That's when the concept of the butterfly effect became crystallized.
Now ask yourself, has a small thing ever lead to a big thing in YOUR life?
Answer the question.
You'll be surprised by the responses.
Till tomorrow
Trilston 馃挷
