Triage with Mental Models
summary
Explains why experts triage by matching observations to a large library of small, testable mental models and gives concrete exercises: build process maps to trace transactions and run counterfactuals, capture analogies with mind maps, use the “fish” functional boundary diagram to prioritize work, and demand ground truth (logs, source code, or contemporaneous notes) for claims. Describes three search strategies (topographic, functional, fault‑evaluation), and shows how to formalize behaviors as state machines so model checking and assertions can prove or refute hypotheses.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Mental models for triage
- 1:28Knowledge transfer failures
- 3:54Mental models bridge gaps
- 6:01Expert triage with models
- 9:11Behavior over documentation
- 15:07Search strategies in troubleshooting
- 19:13Topographic mental models
- 24:31Analogy-based system models
- 26:37Reimagining SLAs
- 30:29Proving system behavior
- 33:40State machines for verification
- 35:50Summary and next steps
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