Release It Book Club Chapter 3 Crack Propagation

In chapter 3 of Release It! Nygard refers to James R. Chiles’s “analogy between a complex system on the verge of failure and a steel plate with a microscopic crack in the metal. Under stress, that crack can begin to propagate faster…[until] the metal breaks explosively.”

In software systems, the equivalent of an explosive break and the “crack” that caused it is called a “failure mode.” Does this analogy and definition resonate with you?

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There are a couple of aspects of this analogy that ring true to me. First of all, defects in the system are often such small things. In my experience, it’s not unusual to spend a whole day looking for the cause of a problem and fix it by modifying one line of code. Very similar to a microscopic crack. Second, when a system is under stress, even small things can tip the system over the edge. Killing it: bringing it down with a bang - or perhaps more of a whimper.