Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips When building and maintaining a system, the fundamental question is, “Whom am I trying to please?” This post offers a different answer. User, Customer, Manager, Boss? What do I call the person I am trying to please when building or maintaining a system? Whom am I trying to please? Here is a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Instead of trying the magnificent, perhaps we should try something we can accomplish. Many problems confront us everyday. These are all opportunities to excel. Really, not just for those silly posters, but these are actually opportunities for us to accomplish something and do some good for us and someone else. It seems […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some of our system’s users will work and work to make the system perform for them. Others, however, will dump it at the first sign of frustration. We have a system. We think it is “good enough.” It can do things for a group of people that nothing else can do. It […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Be alert when first meeting someone. You first few minutes are often the most valuable. Consultant and author Jerry Weinberg once told me, “Pay attention, your customer will tell you their problem and its solution in the first few minutes.” I have found this to be true, many times. Recent examples of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The follies and pitfalls of a trade study. One of the more wasteful things governments, persons who work for governments, do is commission a trade study. Go forth, study something, and report back to us. Time passes. Persons run about asking questions and reading readings. The money flows. Keyboards clickety-clack, spots appear […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Excellent maintenance sometimes indicates a faulty product or service. Sometimes, no maintenance indicates a superior product or service. I first encountered this over 20 years ago. We had purchased similar products from two companies, let’s call them Smith Inc. and Jones Inc. for now. The conversation went something like… “What happens when […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The original hackers were the good guys. Some of today’s hackers still are. Nintendo recently brought back a handful of old video games in a clever packages called the NES Classic Edition. They sold a boat-load of them. The trouble is, you can’t add any games to it. Enter good-old hackers who […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes people give you a task they know you will fail. That is because they want you to fail. Sometimes we are all dysfunctional. In government and business and everything else, sometimes, some persons give tasks to other persons while wanting them to fail. The giver of the impossible task puts the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A new deal where we are offered something for nothing indicates that the provider has been delivering nothing for something. This isn’t just a rant at McDonald’s or Starbucks. It holds for any situation where we expend some resource from some product or service. Someone is “improving” their offering at the same […]

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by Dwayne Phillips My customer pays me for a product or a service. I provide it. I do not, however, have to allow my customer to be my teacher. My customer is my customer. They pay me for a product or a service, and I provide that. However, I don’t have to: act like they […]

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