Is Program Misalignment on Your PC’s Menu?

The Elephant in the Kitchen

Imagine you are the head chef of a big kitchen in a popular restaurant. During the dinnertime crunch, the line cooks get hammered as the demand for meals increases. Pots, pans, seasonings, and food whiz around as orders fly out the kitchen door. Over time, you notice it’s taking longer to get these meals to the tables and you investigate. The place is well staffed and supplied. No tools are lacking. The kitchen is kept clean and functional. Then you take a closer look and see the elephant in the kitchen. It goes like this: The pasta cook has to go all the way to the east end of the kitchen to get to the large pots needed to boil water but then has to trek in the opposite direction for pasta. The tomatoes are off in the vegetable locker and spices are in the pantry in another room. It’s the same story for the soup cook, the dessert cook and so on. They run all over the place to prepare a dish when they should be at their station cooking. As additional appliances and food stocks are added to the kitchen, necessities are pushed even farther out of reach. You solve the problem by relocating the things each chef needs close to their work station and production increases immediately.

An Invisible and Unsolvable Problem—Until Now