Truth and all

There are many sides to truth which can prove to be troublesome in various situations.

Past truth is definitely different from future truth, as we might learn in some of cases. That is, much of now is a replay of before, yet how many times do we get into situations that were supposedly just a simple matter but things got complicated?

We will point to several of these, including the Boeing 787 which is now planned to fly in the second quarter of 2009 and be delivered in the first quarter of 2010. This latest round of estimates follows several which we'll itemize.

Can the plane go through its truth check, which is essentially what the flight test period stands for, in the short time that is now planned? Well, opinions differ. You know what? Those opinions don't amount to a hill of beans, usually.

Why? Well, with something real, like the plane, it has to actually work in a real setting. Now, we can evaluate whether it passed the tests in an ex post facto sense, but we cannot say that it will do so in a forward sense.

Boeing knows this as it has caveats posted about not having 20-20 foresight. Who does? The issue is whether we ought to continue to have the game where the future is predicted, then we all sit around and determine how close the prediction was?

Oh, wait!! That is what science claims for itself, does it not? But, is business and program management a matter of science? Well, that depends upon to whom you talk. Being frank, I'll say no.

What it is, and folks just look at the golden boys of the Street to see what I am talking about (did we not have to bail them out? And 'it is' means business playing like it's a science), is silly misuse of mathematics and computation.

No amount of computer modeling can stand in for nature or the real world. We'll always be getting back to that. Boeing ought to already know that risk management failed so far, in the large that is. No doubt, there are points where the plan worked. Some might say Spirit, except it's just a little Boeing, in a sense.

So, this plane is only one of several 'models' that we'll need to look at as we talk about why truth engineering is a necessary part of the future landscape, virtual and otherwise.

Remarks:

12/13/2008 -- Just when the financial matters looked to be under control.

Modified: 12/13/2008