Bureaucracy of Bullets

I know we’re not supposed to say this, but I really enjoyed this paper. It’s basically about how misinformed or mislead or misread NASA officials were about the problems with the Space Shuttle Columbia, mainly through PP presentation reports.

Main points I found particularly interesting were:

1. The use of the phrase “Bureaucracy of bullets”
2. That through PP presentations, NASA officials were convinced that reports indicated “no problem” rather than uncertain knowledge and decided Columbia was “safe” and needed no further investigations. This was because of how the information was displayed rather than the content. Emphasis was placed in areas through use of a hierarchy of bullets. This merely reinforced the biases of the bureaucracy.

I also liked the point that it seems interesting how one’s elaborate though fits EXACTLY on to one slide. Again, athletics taking priority over content. The unbending slide-by-slide method affects and tailors the message.

Also came across something called “Conway’s Law”, which I had to look up. It is, “Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations”.