Random the Book

Questions for you:

• Where in my work do I compete for shared resources, and how do I manage those conflicts?
• When I encounter a clash with someone else, would introducing randomness into my response timing actually reduce overall conflict?
• Do I understand how simple random processes can resolve coordination problems without complex negotiation?

Questions for your organisation:

• Where do we have resource contention that creates gridlock or inefficiency?
• Could we introduce randomised elements into our scheduling, allocation, or access systems to reduce conflict?
• Are we over-engineering solutions to coordination problems that random backoff could solve more simply?

Further reading

You can find out more about backoff algorithms at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_backoff 

There’s an example here of banded wrens using something analogous to random backoff in the timing of their songs to avoid getting into fights: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4235583/