Broken Windows and the Little Things.

If you can recall the 1980’s, you might remember the sorry state of the New York Subway system. Back then, the subway cars were riddled with graffiti, the stations stank from the urine of drunken homeless vagrants, and violent crime was a daily occurrence. The citizens of New York were justifiably afraid for their lives on their daily commute, as the criminal element surely had the upper hand underground. The situation seemed hopeless, and many wondered whether the city would sink lower than the 1970’s flirtation with bankruptcy.

The police, on a nationwide level, had gotten a “hold the line” type of attitude best exemplified by the hit series “Hill Street Blues”, where the playful banter of the “Barney Miller” force was replaced by the chaos of tight quarters and too much crime. Violent and frequent crime was the norm, with the heroic squad always seemingly on the breaking point of giving more ground to the criminal element.

Enter one William Bratton to the scene. Appointed to the post of Subway Police superintendent, he took a contrarian view of the conventional methods, which stressed ignoring the minor crime and concentrating resources to respond quickly to the major crime. William stressed the opposite, demanding that his officers pounce on the petty crime because he felt that robberies, rapes and murders were enabled by the general lawlessness forged by the petty crime. This is the “Broken Windows Theory”, detailed in a book by James Wilson and George Kelling.

Soon his force was arresting vagrants, turnstile jumpers, and the graffiti defacers. They gave citations to those with loud radios or that littered. Soon, the major crime situation followed the lead of the petty crime and dramatically went down.

When Rudy Guiliani became mayor, took this theory to the whole police department with Howard Safir as commissioner. He attacked high crime areas by aggressively enforcing building code violations such as broken windows, reasoning that the same approach underground will work above ground as well. The results were dramatic, as the crime rate dropped and the general population felt safe in the city for the first time in a few generations. And Rudy Guiliani rode that horse to national stature.

So, this is an Design Engineering article, not a crime log, so why am I writing on this subject? Just as Rudy Guiliani was able to apply a simple thesis that worked below ground to working above ground, there is a lesson to be learned in the engineering environment.

Often we get caught up in the disaster of the moment, or the crisis of the day and that drives us away from what we like to call “the real work” of developing new products and systems. But if we stop and look at it, this example is a good lesson for product development. Just as the police officers felt they had to focus on the “important stuff”, they were actually creating the conditions that led to more crime. And so to this happens in the design world we live in, as we miss the chance to nip tomorrow’s problem in the bud through good design practice. The crisis mode of operation causes us to ignore the little things in our designs. And the big problems all start from little problems.

So go ahead and look at that assembly drawing one more time to make sure it has effective detail so that the poor guy building it 5 years from now knows that the terminal flatness is critical for the next assembly. Recheck those power calculations so that the agency doesn’t find problems with temperature rise in the relays. Validate the firmware so that it doesn’t lock-up unexpectedly after 3 years of operation.

Sweat the small stuff. Make sure the windows aren’t broken, and when they are fix them before everyone notices. And soon you will find that big problems are fewer, and the customer is coming back to you for more. And your own stress level is reduced.