Common sense problem solving

It always amazes me just how complex some people make things in life and fail to look at the simple obvious things first. When developers write an application they always make sure there is some sort of logging mechanism in there to dump out the errors and general useful information. So when a multi million pound system fails running across a a costly cluster environment, the first thing you would expect the developers to do is check the obvious logfile for any clues.

So what happens when it all goes wrong? The big brains get together and come up with all sorts of reasons and things to investigate and then start looking into them. A week later after a tweak here and a tweak there still nothing and the pressure is really on to find the solution in readiness for the final go live date.

After a week of no progress we start to ask to the obvious questions of the team and start going back to basics, the obvious things which they must have checked. Oh no they haven’t. Instead they thought the problem must be complex there they needed to look at everything complex instead of the simple solutions.

Within 10 minutes of looking at the simple log file the core problem has been identified! Staggering really that so many big brain can still miss the obvious. Quite satisfying though spotting the problem :) :)