There was a post a while back on TechRepublic about how leaders ask questions. When was the last time you asked yourself what could go wrong? What are you doing to prevent it, or minimize it’s damage?

I just got done reading Release It by Michael Nygard. I don’t remember the exact numbers he used, but he made the point that any system of sufficient size should expect to experience more than one “once in a million” situations. Assume that your system performs 1000 transactions a day, 365 days a year; after three years you will have processed over a million transactions. I don’t know about you, but saying something will happen about once every three years sounds a lot different than once in a million. So next time you’re in the car, waiting for traffic, start thinking about “what if.”