Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Please tell me what we are doing. Please don’t read from a catalog.

Person beaming with confidence: Look. Here is a block diagram of our system. You see we are using Snowflake, Spark, Databricks, Kafka, Tableau, ThoughtSpot, and toss in a little Excel for good measure.

Person baffled but interested: Interesting. I would like to know what we are doing or what functions we are performing. Do you have something showing that?

Person beaming with confidence: silence

I’ve been in this conversation too many times and walked away with too many headaches and too much heartburn. I want to know what we are doing, i.e., the function. I really don’t want to see the names and cute little logos of products.

Consider, as one example, Excel from Microsoft. It is a fine product. It is such a fine product that it can function in many ways. Excel can be a database of people with name, phone number, email address, home address, and so on. Excel can be the repository in a data call where there are 50 questions and places for 50 different organizations to place their 50 answers all in one thing. Excel can be a project organizer where each sheet contains information on each phase of the project and each participant. And, guess what, Excel can function for the finance folks to keep track of money (wow, I think it was created to do that last one).

The same can be said for each of the products that Person beaming with confidence said at the beginning.

Please, tell me what we are doing. Then tell me what product we are using for each function we perform. Please try harder to communicate how we engineered a system to do something useful for people.

We can do better. Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some AI tools increase productivity in some areas. Okay, I’m done with this task. Now what? That choice can be vexing.

I used an AI tool (won’t mention which one). I completed a two-day task in an hour. Now what? Hey boss, tell me what to do now.

One answer: go to step two, step three, etc. and let’s finish the whole thing before lunch today. Then we’ll move on to another thing.

Another answer: Wow. Only an hour. Let’s do this over again with a slight variation. If it only takes an hour, we can run this a dozen times with a dozen slight deviations to fill the two days we allocated to this task.

Both answers, I am sure there are more answers, are pretty good. Which one do we use? More than anything, this resolves with temperament. Huh? What about dollars and cents? Nope. Temperament or personality. Does the manager like to ponder one more possibility? Does the manager like to move on? Are we in analysis paralysis or going full speed regardless of the hole in the ground in front of us?

Alas, new tools bring these questions. This is not a new situation. These answers are not new. It is unfortunate, that these questions are new to the people now using today’s new tools. Proceed with caution and have some sympathy for the other person.

by Dwayne Phillips

Every now and then we need a new scapegoat, i.e., something that receives the blame for all the faults and mistakes of society. We have one.

Ah, the datacenter. It is big, noisy, ugly, and raises my electric and water bills. I hate it. It is the cause of all ills in my life. It is the new scapegoat.

Never mind that I use it every time I write a blog post, do a Google search, save a computer file, shop for stuff, and … wait a minute. I do these things all the time everyday. There must be something wrong as a scapegoat is supposed to be bad, not useful.

And then there are all those jobs for everyone from a cement truck driver to an AI engineer. How can a scapegoat provide jobs for all those people? And those jobs allow people to house, clothe, and feed families. Are scapegoats supposed to do those things?

Let’s ignore all the uses and benefits of the datacenter. It is the scapegoat. Let’s only discuss its faults so we can blame everything on the datacenter. It causes inflation. It causes people to buy stuff we don’t need. It causes… give me a few minutes to make a list. Scapegoats have to earn their title, and I am sure this scapegoat will earn its title.

Well, maybe or maybe not. It relieves stress to point to something that receives blame for all the ills of the world. And those tall, noisy buildings are easy to see and so much easier to be the object of my pointer finger.

by Dwayne Phillips

The middle manager has been replaced by the entry-level employee. What?

Ah, the bane of 20th century civilization—the middleman. The middleman was the person in the middle who did nothing but pass a product along from the producer to the consumer. The middleman did nothing of value, but took a good 10% or more cut and passed that to poor me, i.e., the consumer.

Closer to home and daily life was the middle manager. This person did nothing but pass instructions from the big boss down to me. What? The big boss could have sent a memo directly to me or something. Why was the middle manager there? Even the big boss knew the middle manager was a waste of money and should be eliminated.

Along came computing hardware and software. Aha! That would replace the middle manager. The word processor, email, desktop publishing, network, inter-network of computers—one of these things would replace the middle manager.

Along came AI, which is merely yet another thing in the above list of things that were supposed to replace the middle manager. Today’s incarnation of AI, there have been many incarnations since the 1950s, is here and doing fundamental tasks in business and commerce.

But wait. Today’s AI is replacing the entry-level employee. That is who would do the fundamental tasks in business and commerce.

But wait. The middle manager is still here. AI saved the middle manager. Instead, AI clobbered the entry-level employee.

Someone made a mistake.

by Dwayne Phillips

There is a penalty paid for late changes. It is not just money, it is often in the loss of people.

Ideas spawn ideas. That is the nature of ideas and people. Write something, paint something, sing something, create something so that we can gather and think and create more.

There comes a point, however, where this loses people. Whey do my best when the boss is just going to read it, find his own idea, and tell me to do it all over again. I’ll just do it halfway because we’ll do it all over again anyways.

There go the people. We are wasting their talent. We are getting half efforts and frustrating everyone.

As a manager, do something better. If I want some ideas so that we can discuss and find new ideas, say so. Ask for an outline, a mind map, even some sketches on the white board. Don’t ask someone to write a finished product only to treat it as a sketch to spur thinking. People learn quickly. If the manager is going to toss it out, deliver trash. We don’t want that.

by Dwayne Phillips

An old saying remains true: the later we find a mistake, the more expensive it is to fix.

The later we find a mistake, the more expensive it is to fix. That is an old saying. It is still true.

The saying is most-often attributed to Barry Boehm as he described it in the Cost of Change Curve. Some of us are old enough to remember the writings of Boehm. I actually met him one day at a conference. Nice enough fellow.

From time to time, we pretend that this thought is something old that applied in olden times when we used old technology to solve old problems. We are in a new age with new minds and everything new and, well, old sayings by old men are just old.

Sorry, if we find and fix a problem just prior to shipping our app, it really hurts. The problem has ties to many things and all those things have to be fixed. Well, they don’t have to be fixed, but shipping mistakes bothers some of us to no end.

On shipping day, everything has tentacles. (I just learned that an octopus has arms but no tentacles while a jellyfish has hundreds of tentacles, but I digress.) Some reach too far and too wide. Rats! (more animals) And we just discovered more tentacles. Darn those tentacles. No more dry humor that isn’t humorous.

Dr. Boehm’s thoughts are still correct. The later we find the mistake, the more it costs to correct.

What really hurts sometimes is that it is not a mistake found late. It is a new idea introduced late. Whatever the source, we have a late change, and the later the change the more the expense. Can’t seem to avoid that.

Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

There is time later for thinking deep thoughts. Now, however, is the time to accomplish the work, now.

“We could do this better”—said me, many times.

I know, I know, boy, do I know. We could do this better. “Let’s do better,” is a phrase I often use at the end of these little blog posts. Right now, however, I have something to do—something to do now.

Let’s accomplish now’s work right now. Scribble little notes on the side as reminders that some time after this, I will discuss how to do it better. I will search for better tools that save time and improve quality. I will do that. I will not, however, do that now. Now I will accomplish the work in front of me.

And note how I wrote “I” instead of “we” in the above paragraph. This is MY problem. This is MY solution.

I can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Does panic create focus? Perhaps. Perhaps some of us would just rather avoid panic.

I saw something silly this morning on some society media site. It read:

I don’t procrastinate. I simply wait until sheer panic improves my focus, It’s a highly refined strategy that I have been perfecting for years.

I have known people who lived this. If you didn’t do everything at the last minute in an adrenaline rush, you didn’t earn your pay. Just like the kid in school who started a two-week assignment at 10 p.m. the night before it was due.

I guess there is something wrong with me. Plan the work, work the plan. Work at a steady pace. Avoid panic. Enjoy yourself, work hard, do a good job, and enjoy yourself.

Yes, things happen that are out of our control. Yes, we have to adjust and make up for lost time. Sometimes those things happen near the last minute. Sometimes is some of the time—not all the time. Sometimes is not a plan and not a strategy.

I may prefer to do it all at the last minute “pulling an all nighter.” I am not the only person involved. Others have family commitments. My panic does not serve their families. Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Let’s revise that one more time. Okay, but will it be better or just different?

Revisions. Edits. That is what writers do. Many prescribe to the notion that the first draft is practically nothing. The real work of the writer begins when the revising and editing begin. And how many revisions finish the writing?

Let’s revise it one more time. I just thought of something different. Let’s put that different idea in there. Okay, done. But wait, one more…

Each revision makes the piece different. Does each revision make the piece better or just different? Perhaps it was already good enough. Perhaps it was already good. Perhaps just one more idea, just one more edit, just one more go through this only results in one more patch stuck to the top of a pile of patches.

Perhaps it was good at the end of the first draft. That may sound sacrilegious to some teachers of writing. Sometimes, however, the fresh idea written carefully is the best idea and results in the best piece. Let’s consider that sometimes. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

I like to plan my work and work my plan. Sometimes, however, thoughts hit me and that plan gets all jumbled up. Plan for, “I just thought of something.”

I like to plan and work the plan. I like process. I like procedure. Let’s do this before that. Why? The past has shown me that this before that saves time and effort and blood, sweat, and tears and all that.

And then, “I just thought of something. Wait, stop, listen to this. This is a better idea for what we are doing. Let’s stop what we are doing and do this instead.”

That happens sometimes. The new thought is much better than the thought I had a month ago. That old thought is driving this plan. I can figure a way to wiggle the new thought into the plan we are executing and squeeze a bit here and there and …

NOPE. STOP. START OVER. Use the new idea in the plan from the beginning.

Well, that’s not good either. What of all the waste and blood, sweat, and tears?

Okay, combine everything, plan for, “I just thought of something.”

The plan has loops and feedback and spirals or whatever term we want to use to build flexibility into the plan. Let’s acknowledge that our plan was based on the best of intentions and thoughts and that smart people have new ideas. Let’s put places in the plan where we can use new thoughts and new ideas.

Plans can be fluid. We can do this. We can do better.