Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips We often have the choice of learning now or later. Often we don’t have the time to learn now, so we put it off until it really hurts. Gosh, we are in a hurry so much of the time. We just can’t pause to think, reflect, and learn at this moment. Some […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One key to learning how to juggle is to know how to drop something. The same is true for managing competing priorities and tasks. Just about every “Help Wanted” ad I see has something in it about managing competing priorities or managing multiple tasks. I guess they want someone who can decide […]

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by Dwayne Phillips To be flexible enough to do new things, I often need a foundation of fundamentals in place first. If I am standing on shifting sand, I have to be flexible to adjust my stance and upper body so I don’t fall. Flexibility is required just to stay in place. If I am […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If we work a little, learn a little, and repeat, we can do some pretty impressive things. We don’t, however, like to do this “little” thing. Let’s work a little, talk about what we did, learn a little, and try again. That reduces the misunderstandings. That keeps us from wasting resources by […]

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by Dwayne Phillips “Everyone” wants flexibility in their job (work from home when I want). How many of us want “meaning” in our job? “I can do this job from anywhere at almost anytime of day or night.” That statement is immediately followed by the question, “So why do you want me here from 9 […]

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by Dwayne Phillips As a writer and just about anyone else, we must be flexible in a rigid manner. The same is true for almost every adjective and its antonym. A writer must be flexible. Except when the writer must be rigid. Except when exceptions arise. The same goes for just about any adjective and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Agile thought: do, learn, change, do learn, repeat. Great stuff in some situations. Not great in national policy. Someone recently noted that the Agile Manifesto was 20 years old. This was a fancy way of stating the obvious when it comes to experiments: do a little, learn a little, do a little, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Three years from now may never come. “I don’t want to be ‘locked into’ company A because company B may have a better offering in three years. We need to be able to shift to company B.”—a well-meaning advisor. In three years, the world may be different. Let’s remain agile. Let’s keep […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Once again, the price of tools has fallen dramatically. This has shifted the place of work, and we are struggling to adapt. A few weeks ago, I went to a seminar where I connected a $100 gadget from Nvidia to a four-year-old $1,000 portable computer from Apple, used a bunch of $0 […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We need to have the definition. Otherwise, we don’t know what we are doing. In agile development, we value working software over documentation. Great. Now…still…we need a definition of the software. Something that says, push this button this happens. Push that button that happens. We, however, don’t have time to write that […]

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