Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we feel that we cannot do what we want to do unless we go somewhere else. Most of the time, however, we can do just fine right where we are physically. We merely have to move mentally and emotionally. I follow the Location Independent Professional blog and a few that are […]

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by Dwayne Phillips As a designer and writer, two of my favorite tools are the blank sheet of paper and the pencil. I love a blank sheet of paper. I love to have a pencil in my hand when I’m looking at a blank sheet of paper. This is freedom. There are no guidelines, no […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A challenge in systems engineering is tracing from requirements through design and implementation to testing. This is done in almost all development methods (often people do this without realizing it). I show a method of tracing that uses Microsoft Word features and link to a video demonstration of the technique. A Requirements […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Old guys should keep learning. I like to write computer programs, so one of the things I am (re)learning is programming in Java. I am spending some time each day studying the Java programming language. Some of my background: I have written thousands of lines of FORTRAN code I have written thousands […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The FCC released its National Broadband Plan this week. Sigh, where do I start with this thing? The Front Cover The PDF version that I downloaded from broadband.gov has no date on the cover. Does anyone at the FCC understand configuration management? Silly question. Go to the first line of the Preface: […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Design reviews can be important parts of projects. At design reviews, we attempt to communicate clearly and minimize misunderstandings. There are several design reviews that are important to the success of a project. This essay describes one design review that people want to have but should never be allowed. We have design […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One task which many of us either choose or have thrust upon us is predicting the future. We usually perform this task poorly. An aid to declaring “the future will be thus” is reframing with a few introductory words. The future will be awful. There is no way out of this. We […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Just a thought on health insurance from an engineer. I see that President Obama doesn’t like what existing health insurance companies are doing with their rates and policies. It seems that the president wants health insurance companies to be non-profit and insure everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions. Health insurance seems to be […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I have always been driven by setting and achieving goals – big goals. Recently, however, I have learned the value of setting a minimum expectation for any endeavor. That minimum removes much of the stress that I have imposed on myself for much of my life. Back in December, we were attempting […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I experimented with using a wiki to gather and trace requirements. I tried the MediaWiki software. While it works well for building a flow down of requirements, it is not good at placing the individual requirements into a single Word document. A systems engineering project is looming at work. We don’t have […]

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