You write shit down and you have career engineers that enforce continuity
It's trendy in software to complain about doing annoying work like writing reports and documenting things. But most hard tasks require writing reports and documenting things.
It's trendy in software to complain about doing annoying work like writing reports and documenting things. But most hard tasks require writing reports and documenting things.
Too often in the land of software we underestimate the potential negative impact the traditional "move fast and break things" approach to product development can have when it comes to real world use in mission critical systems.
Move fast and break things brings you to the Moon in a decade using primitive tech, where is total process compliance can't do that even in 50 years using much more advanced tech.
It's also quite important to remember how many lives were lost (or nearly lost) because of "breaking things" in the Apollo program. Something that's not nearly as acceptable today than it was at the height of the cold war. Something that directly implies moving more slowly and being more sure that everything works the first time, every time.
It can and did happen again, twice, on the shuttle project. Both the O rings and the ice damage were documented.
Ultimately, any process (or lack of process) can be subverted by a bad culture. And unreasonably excessive process - as perceived by the participants - can damage culture as much as not enough.
The problem is that culture is ineffable, so we try to nail it to the ground with whatever we can think of.
move fast and break things worked real well for the folks who got literally creamed while they were viewing the titanic.