Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips What problems do we want to solve? The simpler are usually the more difficult and more important. “World hunger,” has been the answer for beauty queens and scholars my entire life. That was the answer to the problem we should solve. The trouble is, world hunger was solved a hundred years ago. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One of the fundamentals in the engineering of systems and architecture is a “D” word that many loathe in our 21st century. “Let’s hold off on this until we have to decide,” said a hopeful inhabitant of a post-modern universe. Yes, there are things that we don’t have to decide until we […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is yet another fundamental to providing systems that delight users. Have we validated that we verified before vacation? Or is it the other way around? There was a time when verification and validation were so commonly used that we called it “V&V.” Then we wanted independent persons to perform V&V so […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is a reminder of one of the fundamental documents or documentations in creating systems that delight users. It is the Concept of Operations. First things first. We want to provide a system that delights users. Where do we start? Let’s talk with the users; watch the users; learn from the users, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Lots of things to do. Which do I do first? Perhaps I go with the worst first. When my sons were little, they had tactics about the order in which they ate their food at dinner. One tactic was “worst first” in which they ate their least favorite food first so that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Take care when assuming that something was done correctly at some time in the past. “I’ll copy this, modify it, and move on,” said a brave and trusting person. Perhaps “this” was done correctly in the past. Copying and modifying is a good, time-saving tactic. What, however, if this was done incorrectly […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Considering DevSecOps—nothing to see here folks. It is just what computer programmers do. Everybody in the software-creating world is doing DevSecOps (development, security, operations). Well, if you are anybody in the everybody, you are doing DevSecOps. If you aren’t doing it, you are a nobody in the everybody. What is DevSecOps? It’s […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Folks out there in the crowd are clobbering the high-tech giants and everyone else they want to clobber. Yet another essay appears about how open-source software projects appear faster than systems produced by high-tech giants full of experts. Computing power is so inexpensive that there are many, many, many folks out there […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Each generation laments how no one recognizes how special they are. Well, sort of. Times change, ya’ know? I just saw another one of these things online. It was a black and white photo of kids on their bicycles in the street. We were the last generation to ride bikes in the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We invent new ways of being lazy in communicating. It sort of sets us apart from the ignorant masses. I did a Google search on “Kubernetes.” The result: Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Oh, containerized applications. Of course. Jargon […]

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