Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Take care when confusing lab projects with real products. Both are good, but they are not the same. In all fields of endeavor, we have lab projects and real products. Both can be good. They, however, are not the same. Sometimes product managers and marketers confuse these at their peril. Students in […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Games are simulations of real life. Some games simulate real life better than others. The key is to connect the simulations to real life in a meaningful manner. Games are simulations. The Monopoly game is supposed to simulate business, commerce, and acquiring wealth or something like that. Tick-Tack-Toe simulates spatial logic and […]

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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 Today’s practice of delivering software and systems emphasizes continuous delivery. Today’s practice, however, fails at this. Technology is not the problem. CI/CD is continuous integration and continuous delivery (or deployment). Work everyday. As each little increment of capability is finished, deliver it. Perhaps we deliver every day and perhaps several times every […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This one is finished. Time for the next one. It too will finish, and another one will come after it. Many years ago as a much younger man, I spoke with a much older and wiser man. He was about to leave an assignment and begin another assignment. He had learned the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Is it okay to not be the person in charge? I am nearing the end of my professional working career. Maybe I will retire in a year or ten. Regardless of the retirement date, I have worked many more years than I will work, i.e., the past is bigger than the future. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Many of today’s data scientists are similar to man of the web designers of the 1990s. I think this is a good thing. A recent conversation with a colleague helped me to realized something about data science in today’s world. I thought data scientists were computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who knew […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When the terrain and the map differ, believe the terrain. It is there in front of us. We ignore this at our peril. We have a telephone (at least I still do in my home) and a smartphone. We call both of them “phones.” Their names are the same. How we represent […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We don’t need an expert in this or that to build better systems. We need a desire to learn and a desire to please. We don’t need a User Experience (UX) person on the team. We don’t need a Customer Experience (CX) expert on the team. We don’t need an XX (fill-in-the-blank […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A phrase to add to every assignment or action item or anything that goes on a “to do” list. Years ago, author and consultant Jerry Weinberg gave an assignment to attendees of his writing seminar. It was something like: Think of what you should write today. Write that. Do that tomorrow, too. […]

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