Years ago (longer than I care to think about 🙂 ) I worked for a friend for a little bit. Jim sold electronic components like resistors and so forth. It was like US$4.00 for 100 or some (to me) ridiculously low amount. I was resolving some issues with his system that was built on the Pick operating system. For those unfamiliar with it the Pick O/S was, essentially, a three dimensional representation of data. Sort of like arrays that could hold arrays of arrays. :smooooth:

Chatting with Jim one day about a particular resistor a client was insisting be a specific brand (Fairchild over Motorola) Jim said that while both were in fact manufactured to exactly the same specification it was a known issue that often one would work and the other would not. With no real reason on the face of it.

I think sometimes that there are often unknowns that tests, like specifications, just do not work in the real world. No one's fault, just one of those realities that just refuse to fall into what the textbooks say should be. Which, for me, is actually the real issue; that of using the incorrect measuring tool. Maybe "do not work" is too strong whereas "incompletely satisfy" is better.

I also think that textbooks (using the above analogy) are often thought about as defining reality rather than an attempt to codify and represent it. Think bureaucrats vs entrepreneurs - which most accurately defines reality? In other words we're most likely expecting the wrong thing from a test. I'm looking for "good judgement" and how can a test fish that out? I think so to some degree but given that "good judgement" implies responding to a dynamic set of conditions I think that should not be forgotten. I read in Steve's post just that, "How do you think and respond?" That's different than, "What do you remember?"

I can think of fifty things that fall outside of any sort of test that could have an impact of the convergence of designs, plans, specifications, talents, commitments and decisions with the reality of the often mal-defined phrase "Done".

Maybe we're looking for a digital answer in an analog world?