Why is relying on hope not enough to prevent system outages?

Relying on hope without actively testing for failures leads to accumulating reliability risks silently. Without regular failure testing, organizations remain vulnerable to unexpected outages because they haven't prepared for real-world failure conditions.

What lessons can we learn from the 1996 Ariane 5 rocket disaster and Boeing's 737 Max tragedies?

Both incidents highlight the dangers of overconfidence and insufficient scrutiny in engineering practices. They demonstrate that avoiding thorough failure testing and ignoring potential risks can result in catastrophic failures, emphasizing the need for proactive reliability strategies.

Why is it important to test under genuine failure conditions rather than simulations?

Real failures are unpredictable and don't fit neatly into simulations. Testing under genuine failure conditions exposes systems to realistic scenarios, helping teams identify vulnerabilities and build resilience that simulations alone cannot provide.

How does regular failure testing contribute to an engineering culture?

Regular failure testing cultivates a culture deeply rooted in resilience by encouraging continuous learning and improvement. It fosters proactive identification of weaknesses, promotes accountability, and drives sustained efforts toward building robust systems.

What does building resilience require from engineering teams?

Building resilience demands sustained effort and active promotion of a proactive reliability approach. Teams must consistently engage in realistic failure experiments, analyze outcomes honestly, and integrate lessons learned into their development processes.

How can teams transition to a proactive reliability approach effectively?

Teams can transition by embracing regular chaos experiments that simulate real failures, fostering open communication about risks, investing in training on failure scenarios, and continuously refining their systems based on empirical data rather than assumptions or hope.

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When Was the Last Time You Tested a Real Failure?

Reliability

05.06.2025 Summer Lambert - 3 minute read

When Was the Last Time You Tested a Real Failure?

If your last chaos experiment was months ago, you’re relying on hope that your systems will stay up and running in production. Hope is not a resilience strategy.

When you avoid this kind of testing, you are quietly accumulating reliability risks in your systems and accepting the cost of resulting outages. Teams often become complacent and fall into comfortable routines after extended periods without incidents. But beneath the calm surface, hidden risks quietly multiply.

Think about the 1996 Ariane 5 rocket disaster. Engineers confidently reused proven software from Ariane 4 without thoroughly stress-testing it for new flight conditions. Just 37 seconds post-launch, this assumption cost billions, starkly demonstrating what happens when testing real failure scenarios is neglected.

Boeing’s 737 Max tragedies paint a similar picture. Insufficient scrutiny of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) software allowed critical issues to linger unseen, leading directly to two catastrophic crashes. This highlights how essential ongoing, realistic failure testing is to uncover hidden threats.

These events aren’t isolated anomalies. They vividly illustrate how relying on past stability instead of actively seeking vulnerabilities leads to disastrous outcomes.

At Steadybit, we advocate for testing under genuine failure conditions to uncover the unknown vulnerabilities lurking beneath perceived stability. Systems might look solid day-to-day, yet subtle, overlooked dependencies surface dramatically under realistic failure scenarios.

Real failures don’t fit neatly into simulations. They are unpredictable, chaotic, and complex. Designing chaos experiments grounded in actual outages or realistic simulations allows teams to uncover critical vulnerabilities like insufficient redundancies, weak fallbacks, or vulnerable critical paths. These experiments spark deeper discussions on system resilience, architectural choices, and organizational risk acceptance.

Regular failure testing cultivates an engineering culture rooted deeply in preparedness and proactivity. Teams consistently exposed to failure scenarios build instinctual responses. They gain experience not only in reacting quickly but in recognizing and mitigating potential points of failure before they escalate into significant issues.

Building resilience demands sustained effort. It requires actively probing your systems to expose vulnerabilities early, preventing disruptive surprises later.

Reflect honestly: when was the last time your team faced a realistic failure test? If the answer isn’t recent, your next outage is not a question of if, but when. Engage with failures now before you’re forced to confront them on someone else’s terms.

Want more? Listen to this recent talk on the topic of proactive reliability in our podcast, Experiments in Chaos.

Why Many Teams Struggle to Switch to a Proactive Reliability Approach | Experiments in Chaos