Our first interview ever! We welcome to the studio Chris Clearfield, co-author of Meltdown, a book all about system failure and the reasons for it. Chris explains ideas like tight coupling (not the OO kind!) and system complexity, and we explore how they apply to technical debt and bug prioritisation. We get to hear some of the best stories from the book as well, including the hedge fund that lost £500m in 45 minutes, and we learn about failcake and pre-mortem analysis.

GUEST LINKS:

- Chris's site: https://www.chrisclearfield.com

- Chris's twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisClearfield

- Book site: http://meltdownbook.net

- Take the quiz: http://quiz.rethinkrisk.net/quiz/

- Book video preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wi8KA4I34s&feature=youtu.be

SHOW LINKS:

- Psychohistory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)

- Normal Accidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents

- John Allspaw: https://www.kitchensoap.com/about-me/

- Just Culture book: https://sidneydekker.com/just-culture/

- Dunbar’s number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

- Amy Edmondson, Teaming: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaming-Organizations-Innovate-Compete-Knowledge/dp/078797093X

- Jon Ronson So You've Been Publicly Shamed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You%27ve_Been_Publicly_Shamed

- Gary Klein, Pre-Mortem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-mortem