A Software Engineer, a
Hardware Engineer and a Branch
Manager were on their way to a meeting.
They were driving down a
steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes
on their car failed. The
car careened almost out of control down the
road, bouncing off the
crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a
halt scraping
along the mountainside. The car’s occupants, shaken but
unhurt, now
had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a
car with
no brakes. What were they to do?

“I know,” said the Branch
Manager, “Let’s have a meeting, propose a
Vision, formulate a Mission
Statement, define some Goals, and by a
process of Continuous
Improvement find a solution to the Critical Problems,
and we can be on our
way.”

“No, no,” said the Hardware Engineer, “That will take far
too long,
and besides, that method has never worked before. I
‘ve got my Swiss
Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can
strip down the car’s
braking system, isolate the fault, fix it,
and we can be on our way.”

“Well,” said the Software Engineer,
“Before we do anything, I think
we should push the car back up the
road and see if it happens
again.”