In the world of innovation, deadlines are common. But rarely are they as intense as the one I faced during the first Gulf War. At the time, I was a Senior Systems Analyst for Unisys, supporting the U.S. Air Force. Our team maintained a Unisys mainframe stationed in Langley, Virginia, which played a critical role in managing combat support and supply logistics during the conflict. What began as a routine day in a wartime setting quickly escalated into one of the most challenging and rewarding moments of my career.
The Crisis: A Mainframe in the Crossfire
It started with the mainframe crashing at Langley. Operators at the base recovered the system and sent a memory dump for analysis. Before answers could return, it crashed again. These weren’t just ordinary failures—this mainframe was the lifeline for ordering aircraft maintenance parts. In war, downtime wasn’t just inconvenient; it risked mission success and, more importantly, lives. The Government likes to say that unless there is an emergency on par with “airplanes falling out of the sky” then the situation is not urgent enough to mandate an immediate response. Airplanes weren’t falling out of the sky – but maintaining their mission readiness through the rapid acquisition of replacement parts had the same level of wartime urgency.
Analysis of the dump by our Analysts revealed an unprecedented issue: the mainframe was exhausting a specific resource called “queue items.” These queue items managed “guaranteed messages,” like print jobs, which were critical to keeping the supply system moving. For context, exhausting these resources was akin to running out of air in a pressurized tank – a situation no one anticipated.
Peeling Back the Layers: The 5 Whys Technique
The Unisys team turned to a tried-and-true problem-solving approach: the “5 Whys.”
- Why did the mainframe crash? It ran out of queue items.
- Why did it run out of queue items? Messages to printers piled up uncontrollably.
- Why did messages pile up? All the printers ran out of paper at the same time.
- Why did all the printers run out of paper simultaneously? No one was available to replenish them.
- Why wasn’t anyone available? Because every time Saddam Hussein launched a Scud missile, supply terminal operators had to abandon their stations to seek shelter.
The root cause became shockingly clear: enemy missile strikes in the Middle East were crashing our mainframe in Virginia. Each Scud missile launch triggered operators to leave their terminals unattended, causing printer queues to overflow, depleting the supply of queue items. The system simply couldn’t handle it.
The Innovation: A Race Against Time
The stakes were as high as they could get – Congress got involved and demanded a solution. It all flowed downhill from there: Unisys headquarters expected results, and the Air Force depended on us in the Operating Systems Group. In that pressure cooker, I remembered a solution I had developed for another problem: ensuring sequential message delivery for printers. This involved software I wrote to emulate the Communications Management System, queuing messages intelligently and only sending one at a time.
I realized I could adapt this approach to our current crisis. By writing additional code, I created a system that not only managed the queues more efficiently but also captured and stored unprocessed messages any time they started to stack up. It prevented overloads, no matter how many Scud missiles were launched. With no time to lose, I tested the solution, jumped on a plane to Langley, and implemented it directly with the operators.
The Outcome: Success Under Fire
It worked. Seamlessly. The system handled the stress without another crash. Supply chains kept moving, aircraft maintained their mission readiness, and Unisys received a congressional letter of appreciation for our efforts.
Looking back, this wasn’t just about technical ingenuity – it was about staying calm under immense pressure, identifying the root of the problem, and rapidly deploying a solution. Innovation, in this case, wasn’t born from a brainstorm in a quiet room but forged in the urgency of war.
Lessons in Wartime Innovation
This experience taught me several key lessons about innovation:
- Pressure sharpens focus: Deadlines don’t get tighter than in war. The urgency demanded clarity and efficiency in problem-solving.
- Dig deeper for root causes: The “5 Whys” revealed a cause-and-effect chain that seemed inconceivable at first glance. Letting the Whys take you to the end result – regardless of how preposterous it may sound – was the starting point to a solution.
- Reuse and adapt: The solution wasn’t built from scratch. Instead, it evolved from existing work, proving the value of creative adaptability. When innovating under pressure, focus on the creative reuse and adaptation of existing capabilities.
- Teamwork and trust matter: From Langley’s operators to Unisys headquarters to our team of analysts at Unisys, every link in the chain worked in sync to deliver results.
Even now, I reflect on that intense chapter of my career. It wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had, but it was certainly the most memorable. It reinforced my belief that innovation isn’t just about solving problems – it’s about rising to the occasion when it matters most.
If you’ve ever faced your own “under the gun” moment, I’d love to hear how you navigated it. Share your story below!
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