I’ve been thinking. In every complex project — whether it’s a product, system, or construction — we encounter all sorts of issues. They come in many forms: errors, inconsistencies, missing data, unexpected outcomes, mismatches, misalignments, and so on.
Instead of trying to classify every tiny variation, I’ll just call them all issues. Not “problems” per se, but signals. And the way we treat these signals defines the maturity of our engineering thinking.
🧩 What do we usually do when an issue arises?
Let’s say an issue surfaces on the system level of the project.
What does the engineering team do?
Most likely:
“No worries, we’ll handle it. That’s why we’re here.”
And they will — they’ll resolve it.
Engineers are trained to solve challenges.
They patch things up and move on.
But here’s the point:
They rarely ask: Why did this issue happen in the first place?
Why wasn’t it foreseen earlier — at the conceptual level?
And without asking that, they end up patching a flawed concept, without knowing where the flaw was born.
🔁 What should we do instead?
When an issue appears, the natural reaction is to fix it right away.
But what if we did the opposite — just for a moment?
What if we took the issue upstream?
- Could this issue have been identified earlier?
- What assumptions in the original concept might have led to it?
- What part of the concept needs to be updated to prevent this kind of issue from repeating?
Only after revisiting and updating the concept,
should we return to resolving the issue at hand —
now with a stronger foundation beneath it.
📡 Why does this matter?
Because every issue is a tiny rebellion against our assumptions.
It’s the moment when reality says:
“You missed something.”
If we don’t take this seriously — if we just fix the surface —
we risk repeating the same mistake later,
disguised in a different form, but with greater consequences.
⚙️ But isn’t it too costly?
That used to be the case.
Revisiting the concept used to mean:
- delays,
- re-approvals,
- extra meetings,
- and wasted resources.
But today, we have a partner: AI.
With the right setup, AI can:
- identify patterns in issues across multiple projects,
- suggest concept-level improvements,
- simulate impacts,
- and even predict new issues before they happen.
What was once “too hard” is now a viable engineering strategy.
🔄 A new ritual: Upstream every issue
I’m not saying we should escalate every tiny bump.
But we should practice a habit:
- Log the issue.
- Lift it one level up.
- Reflect on its conceptual root.
- Update the concept accordingly.
- Reapply the concept downstream.
It’s not about blame — it’s about system integrity.
💡 Final thought
I think real engineering maturity comes not just from fixing things fast,
but from being willing to reexamine the thinking that caused the failure.
Every issue is an invitation.
Not to fix the moment —
but to upgrade the logic behind the system.
If we treat issues this way, our concepts won’t just survive.
They’ll evolve — and so will we.
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