Building Safer Technology
A Field Guide to Failing Well
Paperback Engels 2026 1e druk 9780135589328Samenvatting
Failure is inevitable. Failing well is a skill.
The era of "move fast and break things" is over. In a world where software and AI are woven into everything from power grids to the devices in our homes, failure is no longer a minor inconvenience—it's a critical business risk that can cost lives, paralyze economies, and erode trust. Building Safer Technology delivers a practical field guide to safety engineering, a practice dedicated to designing systems that are not only innovative but also fundamentally resilient.
Go beyond theory and learn to implement safety practices directly into your workflows and organizational structure. This book provides concrete tools, mental models, and communication strategies for individuals and team leaders to build products that can withstand real-world chaos. You'll learn how to prevent failures and also how to manage them gracefully when they inevitably occur, preserving trust and turning crises into powerful learning opportunities.
You will learn how to: Learn to apply the Safety Engineering Methodology, a four-step process to understand, analyze, and mitigate risk in any sociotechnical system. Identify and analyze potential failure modes in any product, from AI models to infrastructure, using real-world case studies like the Boeing 737 MAX and Zillow’s home-pricing algorithm. Develop robust mitigation plans and resiliency strategies that transform potential disasters into manageable, predictable events. Establish effective incident response processes that protect users, contain harm, and strengthen your systems after a crisis. Integrate safety into your organization's culture with proven techniques for measurement, accountability, and persuasive communication. Utilize ready-to-use templates for resiliency plans, risk strategies, and checklists for brainstorming failures.
Stop reacting to disasters and start building systems that are designed to fail well.
Specificaties
Lezersrecensies
Inhoudsopgave
The Four Principles of Safety Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
From Principles to Practice: Safety Engineering Methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Ch. 2 Applied Examples.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Example 1: AI-Assisted Bank Loans.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Example 2: VioGen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Example 3: Social Media Comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Ch. 3 Understanding Failure Modes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Common Ways Technology Fails. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
From Failure to Impact.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
How Failures Happen.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Understanding the Impacts of Failure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Common Types of Harm.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Understand the Risks.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Ch. 4 Responding to Failures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Methods of Mitigation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Repeated Patterns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Summary: Choosing a Mitigation Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Ch. 5 Managing Incidents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
The Role of Response Within Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Preparing to Act.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Building the Foundation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Your Response Team.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Getting Back to Normal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Always Prepared: Next Steps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Ch. 6 Communicating Effectively.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Building Collaboration.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Choosing Priorities.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Communicating Plans Effectively.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Persuasive Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Ch. 7 Putting Safety into Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Measurement.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Getting People to Do Safety Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Checking Everyone's Work.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Ch. 8 Organizations and Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Safety Team Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Organizational Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Hiring and Onboarding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Performance Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Leading a Safety Organization.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Ch. 9 Safety Engineering Illustrated: Additional Worked Examples. . . . . . . . . 201
Zillow's AI Home-Pricing Failure.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Data Deletion Systems.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Wimbledon's Automated Line-Calling Glitch.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
The COMPAS Algorithm.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Boeing 737 MAX Groundings.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Blackout Cascade: Puerto Rico's Power Distribution System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Ch. 10 Conclusion: This Book Is an Example of Itself. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Mitigating the Risk: Safety Engineering.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
A. Resiliency Plan Template.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
B. Risk Strategy Template. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
C. Checklists for Brainstorming Failures.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
D. Sample Resiliency Plan: AI-Assisted Bank Loans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Index.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Rubrieken
- advisering
- algemeen management
- coaching en trainen
- communicatie en media
- economie
- financieel management
- inkoop en logistiek
- internet en social media
- it-management / ict
- juridisch
- leiderschap
- marketing
- mens en maatschappij
- non-profit
- ondernemen
- organisatiekunde
- personal finance
- personeelsmanagement
- persoonlijke effectiviteit
- projectmanagement
- psychologie
- reclame en verkoop
- strategisch management
- verandermanagement
- werk en loopbaan
