Introduced by a trusted connector?
Every complex system has code, data and diagrams. Underneath all of that, it has human contracts. Not the legal documents, although those matter too. I mean: When human contracts are clear, systems can be messy and still work. When human contracts are broken or absent, even perfect architectures will fail under load. Pastor vs Relief…
On paper, airspace is neat. Lines on a chart. Numbers. Altitudes. Clearances. In the real sky, the envelope is shaped by weather, workload and human limits. I learned this the day a very experienced rotor wing pilot looked at a cross country route I had been given and said three words that stayed with me:…
There are only two kinds of gates in a system: The first kind produces compliance.The second kind produces safety. I learned that two different ways. When The Task Book Actually Means Something In wildland fire, the task book is more than a form. If you want to be: you carry a task book. The book…
Every messy mission system has one reliable pattern:The interfaces break first. They break: You see it clearly any time you try to connect worlds that were never designed for each other. When Systems Touch Without Consent At DHS I saw this in several places: In each case, someone tried to treat the boundary as if…
High tempo systems live or die on one simple question: “Which data do we treat as the truth when opinions differ?” If everyone has their own private truth, you do not have a system. You have a debate club with better screens. In my world, that has shown up as: In an air picture context,…
If you are responsible for a high-tempo mission system, especially one that spans nations and organizations, what are you actually hiring for when you put someone in charge of the technology stack You are not hiring a gadget person. You are hiring someone who can live with incomplete pictures, uneven partners and unforgiving timelines, and…
Staging areas are where you execute, not where you invent trust. When partners first meet in the parking lot of a disaster, they bring trucks, supplies, clipboards and logos. What they usually do not bring is a shared playbook. The pattern is simple: What happened at a small church in Bay St Louis during Hurricane…
In architecture circles, “decouple data from the application” often gets repeated like a spell. Say it enough times and you start to believe that separating data from applications is always good and never painful. In real systems, it is more complicated. Separation can unlock federation, resilience and swappability. It can also introduce new failure modes…
When people talk about “federated systems,” it can sound abstract. In reality, federation is what you reach for when you cannot force anyone to do anything. Before systems like iCAV matured, I saw the cost of non-federation up close (or rather, an integrated system trying to operate in a federated environment). During Hurricane Katrina, data…
Federation is my default. Integration is my exception. The clearest example of that exception is the wildland fire community in the United States, particularly through the National Wildfire Coordinating Group. NWCG brings together the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and other partners. Outside of wildfire, these agencies are quite federated. Their…
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