Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Systems engineering consumes resources. It isn’t “real engineering.” It, however, is usually necessary. Systems engineering—one part of it—enables us to record what everything is and what everything does. But we already know that, duh! Or do we? Consider an organization with three or 33 software systems. What does #1 do? #2?…#33? How […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Beware of those who provide large numbers. Is anyone asking, let alone answering, the next question? Many times in my endeavors I have heard persons proudly quote large numbers. “We are bringing in gazilli-tera-humongous bytes of data every day!” “We can access the data on every grain of sand on every beach […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Makers of systems might consider an old, old list when considering the -ilities or non-functional requirements. “This system is fool proof!” said one person. The other person replied, “I know some pretty big fools.”—paraphrase from something written somewhere at sometime. Considering the “fool proof” system brought to my mind a few questions […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Teacher? Not me. Of course me. Understanding what it means to teach reveals that almost all of us are teachers. teach: verb, show or explain to (someone) how to do something. Have you ever told someone something that they didn’t know before you told them? Congratulations. You are a teacher. It really […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we can do it right the first time. Other situations render this nearly impossible. Let’s understand the difference and manage accordingly. There is an old saying that goes something like: We don’t have time to do it right, but we seem to have time to do it twice. Some say the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Appearances are often deceiving. As managers, we know this, but… A long, long time ago, I was sitting in a chair against the wall in a meeting. The important persons were huddled around the meeting table discussing what important persons discuss around meeting tables. To this day, I have no idea what […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes it is as simple as one word instead of another that can change everything. Do we manage or cultivate? Do we transfer or transplant? Do we tell or till? We could go on. Is the workplace a machine or a garden? Are our colleagues living, breathing humans or interchangeable cogs? Persons […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Ask for information. Use it to change me—not the other person. I teach classes on a few topics at work. The best thing I can do afterwards (a few days later) is ask one of the students questions: “What is this? What is that? How would you do this? What is the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Jeff Bezos and Amazon have received much praise for their use of written essays at meetings instead of PowerPoint and bullet points. Great, but not new. This is a good piece about Amazon’s use of written memos at meetings. Keep the thinking focused. Don’t waste time. Think. Communicate. Excellent. Great. I love […]

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