Dominos are small, rectangular wood or plastic blocks with one side bearing identifying marks and the other blank or identically patterned. Each tile has an open end that can be matched with the open ends of adjacent tiles to form a chain or row. When played correctly, a domino can cause all the remaining pieces to fall, or they may remain in place until they are knocked over by another piece. Dominos have been used to play games of skill and chance since the 18th century, and many variations exist today.
The word domino is also used to describe a sequence of events, such as a sequence of steps in a business process or a series of decisions leading to a particular outcome. When these processes are compared to dominoes, it is clear that they require careful orchestration. The goal of these processes is to achieve desired outcomes through a cascade of events, where each action pushes the next in the right direction. This is referred to as the Domino Effect.
When Hevesh sets up her mind-blowing domino creations, she follows a version of the engineering-design process. She begins by considering the theme or purpose of the installation. Then, she brainstorms images or words that might be relevant to it. Once she has a solid idea in mind, she starts working on the layout. Depending on the layout, she might use a domino map or draw the entire configuration on paper.
Hevesh’s meticulous planning and precise execution are the keys to her success. But there’s also an invisible force at work: potential energy. Every unmoving domino has its own inertia, a resistance to motion until a tiny nudge overcomes it. Once that first domino passes its tipping point, all the potential energy it had stored becomes kinetic energy and moves the next domino. Then, the energy moves yet again, and again, until all the dominoes have fallen.
In the world of business analytics, it can be challenging to apply best practices from software development to data analysis workflows. Without a robust platform like Domino, teams often struggle with friction, awkwardly grafting tools onto their existing processes or tolerating inefficiencies.
Domino addresses these challenges with a single, secure server that provides self-service access to all the tools and infrastructure you need, on demand or in the cloud. Domino stores a snapshot of your code and data each time it runs, and keeps them linked together so you can trace back from an output to the code that generated it. Plus, with centralized execution, it’s easy to scale how you manage your team and projects, spread workloads across machines, or schedule automated recurring jobs. This makes it simple to share models with internal stakeholders, as well as deliver results and diagnostics through a clean interface.