A thought about reliability
Clear assumptions and understandable failure make a useful starting point.
SAMPLE NOTE · Illustrative draft awaiting Joice’s personal edit.
Reliability starts with a few simple questions: what do we expect, what could go wrong, and how would we know?
Make assumptions visible
An assumption is easier to examine when it is written down. Naming a dependency, describing an expected behavior, or explaining a limit can make a system easier to reason about.
Understanding how something fails is part of understanding how it works.
Leave room for recovery
A useful design considers what happens after an unexpected result. Clear feedback and a recovery path help people decide what to do next.
These are general ideas about engineering, not a description of a particular project or workplace.