It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Henry David Thoreau

For reliability engineers, television programs describing emergency room procedures contain more than simply entertainment value. These programs use emergency response jargon that is directly applicable to identifying the defects in an urgent yet organized manner.

Let's begin with the term triage. In an emergency room situation, the typical "first come, first served" approach is ineffective. Although a broken arm might be painful, it can afford to wait while a heart attack victim is being treated. In a similar manner, some functions and some behaviors are more important than others. All malfunctions announce themselves in one manner or another, but cool and calm situation assessment is needed to determine which needs immediate response and which can wait. That cool and calm assessment is described by another medical term, diagnosis.

In medicine, diagnosis refers to the act of identifying the disease or affliction. If we analyze the steps a medical doctor takes in developing a diagnosis, we see that the pattern is relatively fixed. In fact, routine medicine is more of an art than a science. Medical professionals study science so that they understand the background of the steps they take. But when the doctor takes those steps he (or she) is simply following a pattern. A "good" doctor is one who selects the best pattern to follow most quickly.

Let's take a few steps back and see what makes a doctor a "good" doctor. First, a "good"...