Technology is Without Shortcuts, Essay Example

According to New York Times, an article posted by John M. Broder (2011), claimed that BP’s shortcuts are to be blamed for the Gulf Oil Spill. While this seems to be a good story, the debate that will follow after this is, how do shortcuts affect technology and development? Many people or companies as they come up with new development will never jump from product definition to product launching.

A company that will consider doing something like that will find themselves falling into something that they will never be able to come out of. A good example is the development of a particular product that requires a lot of time but the company does not really have the required time. It is possible that the company may decide to jump some processes in order to launch the product on time. While this will enable the company to do that, it will also ruin their reputation as many people will regard them as a fake. Their products will always keep deteriorating in the market instead of peaking up.

This is an argument about technology and what can be the implications when a shortcut is taken to design something. In order to come up with a good analysis and get a good conclusion, this argument will be based on the recent story of BP as they are blamed for the Gulf Oil Spill. Note that this is a story from an article posted at New York Time and thus most of the assumptions that will be used will be derived from this article. The conclusion that is to be drawn from this argument is the fact that technology, however simple it may be does not have any short cuts. All the steps will be required to be followed right from product definition to product introduction to the market.

Considering the fact that, a project is supposed to take steps, we ought to know that there is no way one is capable of jumping either of the steps without consequences. The project manager is supposed to come up with a well-structured plan whereby it will be used to create a time line which will be used to cater for the project. In most cases the time line will include additional time in which if a specific step has not been concluded on time then this time can be used.

According to Broder (2011), BP was running out of time as they found themselves some weeks behind the schedule while their budget was found to be beyond what was expected thus decided to cut down on their budget as well as the time they required to finish the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. While they managed to finish the creation of this well, a disastrous blowout followed.

While both the timeline and budget have been considered in the previous paragraph, it is just based on assumption. However, it is common to find people who after they have noticed that the project will consume a lot of cash, they decide to cut down on cost. This might have been the case with BP. Their finances were too high and needed to finish this project on time. Little did they put into account how important the budget specifications were?

On the other hand, BP forgot the fact that they needed to actually assign some slack time to their project. This is a very important assignment and thus working without it may cause the project to actually backfire as no human being is that perfect to actually know exactly when something is going to be over and if it is going to go as predicted. What many people forget is the fact that, a schedule is just a representation of the real thing. It will have errors, and it is up to the manager to make sure that room for errors is put into consideration.

The project manager is supposed to come up with a well-structured plan whereby it will be used to create a time line which will be used to cater for the project. While more than one source tried to come up with the main cause of this blast, some people after reading the report that was created by the federal bureau came to believe that this is truly the cause. It is possible that the company may decide to jump some processes in order to launch the product on time. While this will enable the company to do that, it will also ruin their reputation as many people will regard them as a fake.

This has risen up a federal investigation as too what was the main reason to the blowout. And while some people would want to pin this disaster to something else, the federal investigators have already finalized on their case, pointing the fact that, it was BP’s shortcuts to the development of the well that caused the disaster. It was found that, the cause of the explosion was the failure of the cement at the base of the 18,000-foot-deep well that was built to contain oil and gas within the well bore (Broder, 2011).

On the contrary, this is seen as the main cause, whereas the main explosion was made possible by compounding errors caused by human as well as mechanical errors, which allowed natural gas under the tremendous pressure to shoot onto the drilling platform (Broder, 2011). While more than one source tried to come up with the main cause of this blast, some people after reading the report that was created by the federal bureau came to believe that this is truly the cause.

The blast left 11 of the 115 crew member dead while it took 87 days to get the spilling oil under control. The main cause when we create the whole schedule for the well creation is poor management skill, last minute changes of plans, monitoring and control which encompasses both failure to observe and respond to critical indicators, inadequate well control while insufficient emergency bridge response training to the employees were as viewed by Broder (2011).

It is not out of the blues stating the fact that many people while they plan the creation of something tend to forget putting monitoring and control as part of the schedule. This is because this aspect has no definite way of putting it in the schedule. In fact, many people have found it difficult to actually address it. BP’s blast was mainly caused by explosion due to bad cement layout. Cement is one thing that people know take a longer time to dry while a thinner layer will actually not do the job.

Monitoring and control could have foreseen this and thus provide a mechanism in which the cement would be properly laid. In addition to that, while human errors were seen as to compound to the blast if it was not to the bad laying of the cement them we would not have been counting this lose. The project manager is supposed to come up with a well-structured plan whereby it will be used to create a time line which will be used to cater for the project. While more than one source tried to come up with the main cause of this blast, some people after reading the report that was created by the federal bureau came to believe that this is truly the cause. It is possible that the company may decide to jump some processes in order to launch the product on time. While this will enable the company to do that, it will also ruin their reputation as many people will regard them as a fake.

It may sound outrageous to actually blame this problems to shortcuts since somebody else may reason the if statement which entails the statement “what if the well had not blown even after the shortcuts that BP’s took?” but while we consider the fact that all developments require step by step process which should eventually lead to completing of the development then our answer to the cause of the explosion is shortcuts through development.

Poor management will assume the responsibility of the well creation being weeks behind. This is because if the management was to the required standards then there is no way that; this development could have fallen behind. Time being the most important fact, the company needed to cut down on some processes, which may have included monitoring and control which is presumed to be the most important process in any development. In addition to that, I can also be assumed that BP did not actually take time to implement this plan.

The article included the fact that, most of the problem was on the cementing operations meaning that, cementing operation may have been given a shorter time or there was no enough cement allocated to this creation. This also gives us the opportunity to assume that, BP’s due the changes to their plan did not take their time to actually calculate the correct budget to be used for this development. However, while these seems to be based on the article posted on New York Times, the main argument will still remain that, technology and development can never be rushed. The process towards completion will always have to take its course whereas is new plans have to come up them more time and money will have to be added to the development.

Work Cited

Broder, John. “Report Blames BP’s Shortcuts for Gulf Oil Spill.” 14 9 2011. New York Times. 14 9 2011 <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/science/earth/15spill.html?hp>.