Recently when with a client discussing their support needs; servers, ongoing tweaks, general maintenance, etc, I found myself quoting the three main principles of Krav Maga. For those not familiar with Krav Maga it’s an Israeli hand to hand combat system designed to be pragmatic and effective. If you’ve seen a film in the last five to ten years with a fight scene in it, you’ve probably seen Krav Maga in action.

The three principles

  1. Eliminate the threat
  2. Counter
  3. Disengage
  4. (look for new threats)

Ok, so there’s a fourth, essentially that means go back to step one.

I found myself explaining them like this…

Eliminate the threat

When we first discover a problem (or it’s reported to us) we need to eliminate it as quickly and pragmatically as possible to prevent disruption of service or user experience.

Counter

Once the threat is eliminated, we proactively look at how we can prevent this from happening again in the short term, building on the initial “technique” used in step one.

Disengage (and then look for new threats)

Once the problem is resolved, we remove ourselves from the minutiae and try to take a holistic view on where other problems may arise based on steps one and two and then repeat.

A pretty concise summary of dealing with any problem really…

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