Overcome by Events

There is a phrase we use here at work when a problem has been around for so long that it no longer becomes relevant, when so much of the software or hardware has changed with the passage of time that don't think the problem is actually a problem anymore. The problem is said to have been "Overcome by Events". OBE, for short.

This particular phrase applies not only to software and hardware anomalies, but also to documents and emails and discussion topics which linger too long in the "unresolved" category. Unfortunately, due to the overwhelming flood of information to which we are all subjected these days, it can truthfully be said that most of the hot topics of today will be OBE tomorrow.

So are they really worth worrying about?

I have learned over the past twenty-five years in (mostly) the aerospace industry that they are not. Most of them become irrelevant after a few days, a few weeks, a few months. Going through all my old emails, it amazes me how many of them were marked 'Critical' and then got lost in the shuffle of priorities, and months later, it is difficult to remember why it was that they were so important. Certainly they are not hot issues anymore.

(This also underlines the difficulty of determining what is really Critical when everything is deemed critical. "When everyone is Special, no one is Special.")

The problem is determining which issues are really important at the time they first come to light, so that they can be dealt with in a timely manner. And not just the ones which are important to the sender, but those which are important to everyone. Issues which have only a single champion, especially a champion who is unable to articulate clearly the reasons why this particular issue should get attention from others, are lost in the noise. Typically only the issues which are raised to the appropriate level get that attention.

But even with issues being raised to a high level of attention, sometimes there are just too many of them. The limits of human attention span are breached. Our ability to cope with the complexities of the issues is maxed out. Stress scrambles our brains.

It is then that our safety mechanism kicks in, and we decide to let Father Time do his best work, and we simply step away from the problem for a while to see if it is really as important as it seems.

A week later, after things have stewed in the pot, the problem does one of two things: it either comes to a furious boil, spilling over the top and scorching everyone in its path; or, in the more likely scenario, it falls off the radar and joins the million or so other 'Critical' problems that have been Overcome by Events.