Originally Posted by
Notanatp
The truth may eventually prove otherwise, but I have a hard time believing that someone told his manager that they should hold a design meeting to review the requirements and spec for the feature, and the manager said no. There may have been cost and schedule pressures that explicitly or implicitly discouraged a highly-formal development process for MCAS. But it smells more like a situation where the engineers involved simply didn't appreciate the risk presented and thought of it more as a bug fix or minor tweak not requiring formal process, rather than appreciating the risk but intentionally cutting corners on the sw dev process to save money.
I don't have a hard time believing that. There is a long, well-documented and dishonourable tradition of managers doing just this. Most famously:
“Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat”
Jerry Mason, a Senior VP at Thiokol, and the most senior manager present starts the Thiokol caucus by observing that the decision from here on will be “a management decision”, and that “Am I the only one who wants to fly?”
Well-analysed here:
https://clearthinking.co/the-telecon...fted-part-two/
Also
https://www.onlineethics.org/Topics/...icationContent