One of my favorite lines is said by Jeff Goldbloom’s
character, Ian Malcolm, “but John, if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks, the
pirates don’t eat the guests” – I appreciate that fact as a Disney World
attendee.
Vision and Scope
·
A zealot running an organization without some
counter-controls is a poorly structured company or department. Even brilliant
entrepreneurs need a respected counterpart or cohort who will consider the risk
of scope and direction.
·
Just because you “can”, doesn’t always mean you
should (That’s an Ian Malcolm quote)
·
If you can do it, someone else can figure out
how too as well. How do you deal with competition? Intellectual espionage is
not just a movie creation.
·
What John Hammond created was a new ecosystem
where extinct animals and plants interacted with native animals and plants. He
“thought” he created a theme park. The two have nothing in common and in fact,
have very different needs and goals.
“All theme parks have issues.” His words, not mine. (or rather Michael Creighton’s).
Be sure that you have adequately defined your intentions. Be true to those.
Design
·
I would be thrilled to see brontosauruses and
triceratops walking around. I wouldn’t have to see a T-Rex to be satisfied. Why
couldn’t herbivores have been Phase 1 and carnivores been Phase 2 after a
series of Lessons Learned meetings? Of course, that too could bring its own set
of issues.
·
Who defined the DMZ? Poisonous dinosaurs that
walked around on the way to the Pier? Sounds like a bad plan to me. (business
comparison – data should only be placed in control areas with fences)
Process
·
Poor project management. Experts in the subject
matter were only approached after a catastrophic issue had occurred.
·
Poor hiring procedures – Dennis Nedry, the
genius from Cambridge, was a poor hire. A good background check would probably
have showed that he had credit issues that could negatively impact a top-secret
and highly profitable business.
·
No Separation of Duty – Nedry was a programmer
who 1) wrote code, 2) introduced it into production (without testing) and 3) also
had access to the secure area where the frozen dinosaur embryos were stored. In
his role, he did not have a responsibility for the embryos. That should have
been restricted to a business need only role. At a minimum, someone should be
reviewing who does what, where and when.
·
Introducing code into production environment
without peer review – This allowed Nedry to turn off the security systems so he
his covert actions could escape notice.
·
Fail-safes had variables that Subject Matter
Experts saw the holes in, versus
internal architects.
·
Lack of disaster recovery plans and testing,
(how do you get to the point of bringing in a focus group to sign off on the
environment without having undergone a full disaster recovery test?)
o
Fail-safes had variables that Subject Matter
Experts saw the holes in, versus
internal architects, (withholding lysine, female vs male frog dna)
o
Key systems had dependencies that endangered the
overall stability of the environment,
o
Raptors – testing the defenses – pay attention
to predators inside and out, (who knew they could open doors, who knew they
were testing fences to identify weaknesses?)
o
Underestimating the potential for chaos,
o
Who thought it was a good idea to put the master
power controls physically past the raptor environment?
·
Underestimating what you don’t know – bring in
Subject Matter Experts, if for no other reason than to put a stamp on your
architecture and plan,
·
Poor hardware/memory configuration of systems –
if compute cycles are so intensive that they are able to bring down security
systems, the environment is not sufficiently robust to be in production. Of
course, its possible that Nedry’s excuse was simply a lie – but wouldn’t Mr.
Samuels have known that?
·
Just because you “can”, doesn’t always mean you
should
Hindsight
is 20/20 but the majority of the issues created by John Hammond’s zealous
attitude could have been foreseen if he had brought the right people in at the
right time and had the right processes and disciplines in place. The brilliance
of brainstorming is that different professionals’ experiences contribute to the
overall plan and experience. Jurassic Park is a terrific example of what could
go wrong in a business. Lessons learned?
·
Pitch your idea to someone you respect
·
Bring in “no-men or maybe-men” versus yes-men· Plan
· Plan some more (you can be on the cutting edge and still follow this advice)
· Create a structure that resists weaknesses
· Test
· Communicate
· Succeed
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