Software development principles are always useful to apply to non-software contexts, and one of them we’ll examine today: “never fail silently.”
First, let’s explain what this means to software developers. When you’re on a web site or app (is all software an app these days?), and something goes wrong, what should the program do? There’s a whole universe of thought around this, commonly called “error handling,” that contains a few gems of insight. A few classic things that best practices dictate should be done include:
- Logging the error
- Alerting the user
- Sometimes reporting that error (have you installed software that asks for permission to send an email to the company with anonymous usage data?)
These are important for a few reasons, and let’s focus on the middle one: alerting the user. It just happened to me yesterday; I was using a new app, and when I went to click to “submit” my signup info, the button lit-up but nothing else happened. I clicked again and again and again but nothing happened. Very frustrating. Clearly, there was a signup error on their part. The silent failure was frustrating to me.
But imagine it had, instead, just sent me a message saying, “Oops. There was a problem. The Authorities have been alerted and they’re on their way.” I wouldn’t have had nearly as much frustration as pressing the button again and again and I would just have waited for a new release of the software.
This model applies to all client interactions. When you fail, failing silently—without the relevant people knowing—creates a key problem: it’s overwhelmingly likely that they will find out sooner or later. That’s when the key Nixonian principle comes into play: “it’s not the crime, but the cover-up.”
In other words, the frustrating thing from your client’s or boss’s point of view isn’t that you messed up. They know you’re human. It’s that it was hidden, so they couldn’t ensure it was solved and set up structures so it doesn’t happen again.
There are exceptions of course, and the main category of exceptions is small things. You made a typo and one minute later, you fix it. Okay, you don’t need to tell anyone. But you’re being picky to even think of an example like that! The pattern is the more important the issue is, the more important it is you share the news with everyone as early as possible.
