Chapter 3. The Real Goal
What was the success criterion for the Phyllis story? I went into the engagement thinking that it was “Cary has successfully rebalanced our files on our new disks.” But the client didn’t really care about file balancing. Well, they did, but only insofar as it made Phyllis’s thing run faster. They cared about file balancing only because they believed that file balancing would help Phyllis. File balancing wasn’t their real goal, it was merely a potential cure that someone had proposed.
The lesson to learn here can be told in just three small words:
Look at it.
It sounds simple. I mean, how hard can it be to just look at something? But it’s one of those things that’s harder than it seems at first. Then, once you break a couple of bad habits, you realize that it really is easy after all.
To “look at it,” you have to do two things:
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Figure out what the right it is.
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Figure out how to look.
The first step is usually a matter of just changing who you listen to. The second step requires tools. I’ll be sharing lots of ideas with you about both.
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