Thread: Here's the most fun & frivolous tech news today: Railway Operation Depot in the Chinese city Dalian just published an article on their harrowing journey racing to restore the old version of Flash after Adobe's ban, which collapsed their system and paralyzed the railway /1

The article was written a bureaucratic, propaganda, war diary style, with a detailed timeline down to minutes. "Jan 12, 8:16, Depot received malfunction report. The computer system stopped displaying pages...within 30 mins, computers in the entire depot had the same prob" /2
"After calls and online searches, we identified the source of the issue is American company Adobe's comprehensive ban of Flash content" /3
"8:41, IT department held an emergency meeting & took on four urgent measures: 1. informed supervisors and higher-ups 2. immediately started searching for alternatives to solve page inaccessible issue 3. founded a software task force 4. founded a hardware task force" /4
..."12:10 we temporarily maintained the stability of the depot"
..."13:00 a second crisis meeting was held to address three deeply rooted issues"
..."14:11 another crisis erupted. We are no longer able to print pages, again" /5
...
"20:20 A third wave of bugs was upon us. Flash we restored from Ghost system was disabled from all computers again...We held the third emergency meeting. The only goal: fix the Flash from (pirated) Ghost windows system" /6
..."Jan 13, 01:09 Wan Jia Ling stop is fixed!...we all gathered and confirmed. The room burst with cheers." /7
The article is so long and surprisingly entertaining, and it ends with "20+ hours of fight. No one complained. No one gave up. In solving the Flash problem, we turned the glimpse of hope into the fuel for advancement." link: https://t.co/2evuiGmkkT /8
Honestly, this is the Y2K content the world owes us for 20 years. /END
the article reads like dozens of parents coming together to overcome the insurmountable challenge of updating Flash. They then wrote a war diary on those 20 brutal hours. Not sure if my sense of humor is wicked, but this made my day.

More from Tech

"I really want to break into Product Management"

make products.

"If only someone would tell me how I can get a startup to notice me."

Make Products.

"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."

MAKE PRODUCTS.

Courtesy of @edbrisson's wonderful thread on breaking into comics –
https://t.co/TgNblNSCBj – here is why the same applies to Product Management, too.


There is no better way of learning the craft of product, or proving your potential to employers, than just doing it.

You do not need anybody's permission. We don't have diplomas, nor doctorates. We can barely agree on a single standard of what a Product Manager is supposed to do.

But – there is at least one blindingly obvious industry consensus – a Product Manager makes Products.

And they don't need to be kept at the exact right temperature, given endless resource, or carefully protected in order to do this.

They find their own way.
A common misunderstanding about Agile and “Big Design Up Front”:

There’s nothing in the Agile Manifesto or Principles that states you should never have any idea what you’re trying to build.

You’re allowed to think about a desired outcome from the beginning.

It’s not Big Design Up Front if you do in-depth research to understand the user’s problem.

It’s not BDUF if you spend detailed time learning who needs this thing and why they need it.

It’s not BDUF if you help every team member know what success looks like.

Agile is about reducing risk.

It’s not Agile if you increase risk by starting your sprints with complete ignorance.

It’s not Agile if you don’t research.

Don’t make the mistake of shutting down critical understanding by labeling it Bg Design Up Front.

It would be a mistake to assume this research should only be done by designers and researchers.

Product management and developers also need to be out with the team, conducting the research.

Shared Understanding is the key objective


Big Design Up Front is a thing to avoid.

Defining all the functionality before coding is BDUF.

Drawing every screen and every pixel is BDUF.

Promising functionality (or delivery dates) to customers before development starts is BDUF.

These things shouldn’t happen in Agile.

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