Friday, August 26, 2005
ADVICE :: How to Handle Large Scale Loss: Assesment and Recovery
If you deal with accounting, e-commerce or basically any field in the software development industry that involves working with large amounts of data, you know that as a software developer, you have a core responsibility when it comes to working with large amounts of important data (financial info etc..) You must eliminate as much of the human factor that you can. We all know, computers are 1's and 0's, true or false, on and off. Thats how they work, they don't make mistakes. The people operating them do.
But alas, it's inevitable...you will come across cases, more often than not, where there WILL be human interaction involved.. and when this happens, you must plan or be ready to suffer the rath of the evil "human error" *the crowd gasps*.
Recently, my company suffered a loss of over $18,000.00 over a 20 day period due to a simple human error on my part. This little screw up could have been easily avoided had I been granted the time to automate the process that I was doing by hand this particular day (which would have been FAR less than $18,000.00 in time needed to write) but i digress...
The fact was, we had lost $18,000.00 and I was panic struck. I ran down to the IT guys office, in a cold sweat explaining what I had found...and being a marine, calm and collected, he told me the following.
IT Guy: "Stop. Have you stopped the Bleeding? are we still losing money?"
ME: "Yes. I've stopped it. No more loss."
IT Guy: "Take a deep breath."
Me: "ok"
IT Guy: "Have we made changes so it won't happen again?"
Me: "It won't."
IT Guy: "Okay, so let's try and fix it and figure out how to recoup this cash we lost"
Me: "Ok."
And so we did and that was that. After all was said and done, I asked him, "how did you remain so calm amidst the shit storm today?" And he told me about one of the core items they teach you in the Marines, is how to treat a fallen soldier, and how he applies it to every personal catastrophy that he is greeted with:
1. Stop the bleeeding.
2. Start the breathing.
3. Protect the wound.
4. Treat for shock.
This has so far, been some of the best advice for me and I have repeated this back to myself on SEVERAL occasions after I have made a mistake (of the VERY few I make).
So now I pass this wisdom onto you fellow IT reader... just remember, next time all hell breaks loose in your department, don't lose focus and make the situation worse... maintain focus and repeat to yourself...
1. Stop the bleeeding.
2. Start the breathing.
3. Protect the wound.
4. Treat for shock.
And when all is said and done, the day doesn't end up being as bad as you thought it was going in.
Cheers cletus!
But alas, it's inevitable...you will come across cases, more often than not, where there WILL be human interaction involved.. and when this happens, you must plan or be ready to suffer the rath of the evil "human error" *the crowd gasps*.
Recently, my company suffered a loss of over $18,000.00 over a 20 day period due to a simple human error on my part. This little screw up could have been easily avoided had I been granted the time to automate the process that I was doing by hand this particular day (which would have been FAR less than $18,000.00 in time needed to write) but i digress...
The fact was, we had lost $18,000.00 and I was panic struck. I ran down to the IT guys office, in a cold sweat explaining what I had found...and being a marine, calm and collected, he told me the following.
IT Guy: "Stop. Have you stopped the Bleeding? are we still losing money?"
ME: "Yes. I've stopped it. No more loss."
IT Guy: "Take a deep breath."
Me: "ok"
IT Guy: "Have we made changes so it won't happen again?"
Me: "It won't."
IT Guy: "Okay, so let's try and fix it and figure out how to recoup this cash we lost"
Me: "Ok."
And so we did and that was that. After all was said and done, I asked him, "how did you remain so calm amidst the shit storm today?" And he told me about one of the core items they teach you in the Marines, is how to treat a fallen soldier, and how he applies it to every personal catastrophy that he is greeted with:
1. Stop the bleeeding.
2. Start the breathing.
3. Protect the wound.
4. Treat for shock.
This has so far, been some of the best advice for me and I have repeated this back to myself on SEVERAL occasions after I have made a mistake (of the VERY few I make).
So now I pass this wisdom onto you fellow IT reader... just remember, next time all hell breaks loose in your department, don't lose focus and make the situation worse... maintain focus and repeat to yourself...
1. Stop the bleeeding.
2. Start the breathing.
3. Protect the wound.
4. Treat for shock.
And when all is said and done, the day doesn't end up being as bad as you thought it was going in.
Cheers cletus!
