A situation when in the opinion of the master, the vessel, vehicle, aircraft or person is in grave and imminent danger and requires immediate assistance. International conventions (SOLAS, COLREG) clearly establish when a distress signal (such as a “Mayday” call) may be made.  These same conventions bind those that receive a distress signal to respond in a particular way. Our […]

There’s a subreddit called “ATBGE” which stands for “Awful Taste… But Great Execution!” What lurks within is a lasting testament to the possibility of perfectly implementing a thing of no value. Or worse. Worse such as when a design, despite flawless execution, actively goes against the purpose of the thing to which it’s being applied. […]

Problem Analysis is probably the most well known of the Kepner-Tregoe thinking processes, and the one referenced in the ITIL textbooks.  Almost certainly your current job description includes a “problem solving” section, yet I suspect that problem solving rarely proceeds via a systematic process and instead is often intuitive and sporadic.  How many times has […]

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts – for support rather than for illumination.” Andrew Lang So you need to do reporting and you think that adding categories and subcategories will be the solution? But what if you are wrong? Sometimes the obvious go-to solution is not the optimal solution; neither for […]

  ITIL has been designed to use a common language to describe processes and functions as clearly as possible. Incident Management is a good example of this.   Incident Management is the most mature of the ITIL processes that we use here at The University of Edinburgh. The process was designed in collaboration with the University […]