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Entries Tagged as 'General Systems Thinking'

Artificial Intelligence

February 16th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Once and for all we answer the question: what is artificial intelligence? It was the summer of 1986, and I was sitting in an office of a government manager several layers of the bureaucracy above me. There were other people in the room and they were discussing what was a red-hot technology […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Technology · Thinking

The Only Possible…

July 19th, 2010 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There is always one more solution. Sometimes we just need a little more of this or that to see it. And when people claim no more solutions, they are telling us all sorts of things. I liked Seth Godin’s recent blog post. In it, Seth wrote: The only possible response … isn’t. […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Thinking

Latency

July 15th, 2010 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Don’t let recent events explain a current situation when prior events combined with latency provide a better explanation. I spent a week on the Colorado River going through the Grand Canyon. I am posting a number of stories from that week. In this post, I return to my regular blogging topics and […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Grand Canyon

Publish on Demand – FastPencil Part 2

May 27th, 2010 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips My printed book from FastPencil is in hand. It took about three weeks for FastPencil to transform a PDF file to a paperback book. It is 6″x9″ and 155 pages. Lessons Learned: 10-point font is too small for my eyes I chose a creme paper instead of white, I wish I had […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Image · Systems · Writing

Right Problem, Wrong Method, or was It the Other Way Around?

January 28th, 2010 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are problems and there are methods of solving them. Given these two items, there are four cases that can define projects. Let’s consider the cases and how to avoid the more painful ones. In some of my books I have written about projects that went astray, i.e. they were disasters with […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Management · Problems

Improving the Work

January 25th, 2010 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Systems builders should concentrate on one thing – improving the work of the people who will use the system. Sometimes we lose sight of what we are doing. We build systems. Why? Well, to make money for our employer. We hope the system makes money for the organization that uses it. This […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Requirements · Systems

Paying the Tuition and (Maybe) Getting the Education

January 6th, 2010 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Life is full of bad experiences. There is always something that can be learned in each experience. The bad experience is a form of tuition. The learning is a form of education. Nothing guarantees we get the education with the tuition. The education, however, is there for our choosing. College is pretty […]

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Tags: Change · Choose · General Systems Thinking · Learning

Technical Debt

December 14th, 2009 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Technical debt in a system builds as changes are made to the system. At some point, the expense and risk of the next change is prohibitive. This is the first post I will make about fill-in-the-blank debt. These all go back to the concept of technical debt in a technical system. Systems […]

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Tags: Design · General Systems Thinking · Technical Debt

Adapting and Adaptability

November 16th, 2009 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Situations change and people adapt to those changes. Has adapting to chance taken away your  ability to adapt? Change is constant Okay, that is neither original nor brilliant. It does, however, describe my experiences. Groups of people adapt Another observation that is neither original nor brilliant. What many people fail to observe […]

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Tags: Adapting · Change · General Systems Thinking