Many times I have witnessed a sad tragedy. Here's what happens:

1. A team design review for a new project.
2. I see a simple design that has quite a few holes.
3. I casually mention the holes and ways to avoid them.
4. The warnings are ignored with comments like "that 'never' happen in real life"
5. Eventually the things that "will 'never' happen" happen
6. An emergency team design review for a broken project.

So what do I do? Copping the "I told you so" attitude is not going to win friends and influence people. Sometimes years go by and the comments from step 3 are forgotten anyway. I definitely don't want to be the annoying pest reminding the world of the gotchas. I often sit back and watch the Titanic sail off to Europe.

It's frustrating to see bad designs move forward. It's also frustrating that I can't seem to convince others of the pending peril of the current path. I do worst on team meetings where everyone has different ways of understanding different terms. Also, egos tend to win of reason and thought. I'm looking for good tactics to convince groups people to use some new and complicated ideas.