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Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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Entries from May 2016

DevOps: Born of Managers Managing Poorly

May 30th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Yet another new occupation comes from yet another bad practice. For the past several years surveying the job market, I kept finding ads for a position called DevOps. Some reading and discussions sort of brought me to an understanding of what that is. Once again, I learned that I did this new […]

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Tags: DevOps · Management · Work

Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan (even in Agile)

May 26th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I emphasize fundamentals in my work. One such fundamental is the old cliche about planning and working (see title). I find it still applies—even with “new” methods like Agile. Plan your work, work your plan I heard that a lot in the 1980s. I find it to be one of those things […]

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Tags: Agility · Culture · Lifecycle · Management

There ARE Stupid Questions

May 23rd, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Forget the old cliche about stupid questions. There ARE stupid questions, and hiring managers have asked me a bunch of them. I’ve been interviewed for jobs a dozen times There are stupid questions, and hiring managers ask them all the time. First, don’t ask the person to solve your problems. This is […]

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Tags: Adapting · Adults · Questions · Reaction · Work

Our Bad Customer

May 19th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we are stuck with a bad customer. We still choose how we live and work. Alright, our customer is bad. They gripe all the time, show no appreciation for our efforts. They are, however, our customer and they pay our bills. So now what? We will: work everyday work smart have […]

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Tags: Choose · Culture · Work

But is that Your Job?

May 16th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are many almost insurmountable jobs out there. Are any of them, however, your job? I my current search for employment, I talk to people here and there about jobs. Several of the people I have met describe their jobs as the most impossible in the universe. The jobs they describe are […]

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Tags: Communication · Management · Scale · Scope

Deep Learning: Today’s Hot New Programming Language

May 12th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips New deep learning tools have turned a technology field into a general-purpose programming language. I worked with neural networks 25 years ago (yes, I am that old). Recently, big, big neural networks have returned to favor as deep learning. Clever techniques have reduced this to a programming language instead of an area […]

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Tags: Knowledge · Learning · Technology

Me, and Something from Me

May 9th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Life is much easier when I distinguish myself from things that I produce. I write. I write blog posts, books, magazine articles, and lots of documents at work. People tear up some of the things I write. That can hurt, if I don’t know the difference between me and something I wrote. […]

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Tags: Choose · Communication · Differences · General Systems Thinking

Solution Collapse

May 5th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips If we work hard enough and smart enough to the solution, we often find the solution collapses to something small and simple. At the end of all the work, we find the solution. The solution is messy, but it is a solution. Then we go home. Then we come back to work […]

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Tags: Problems · Process · Systems

3D? I Want 2D

May 2nd, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Call me too literal, call me too geeky, but I want to have actual 2D anything. 3D! 3D! 3D! Everybody wants 3D everything. We want… 3D printing 3D user interface on the smartphone 3D movies 3D gestures for control of computers 3D integrated circuits The list goes on. Silly me, I want […]

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Tags: Computing · Expectations · General Systems Thinking