Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Regardless of how earnest and sincere the persons, being misinformed at Step 0 dooms any endeavor. Step 0 is the beginning. Some call it the foundation upon which all things are built. It is important. In my experience, regardless of how earnest and sincere any person(s) may be, if they are misinformed […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are other words, but there are three basic things to consider in projects and project management, so let’s review these basics. Time goes on. We have new methods and methodologies (let’s toss in a couple of extra syllables to trick in unknowing into thinking that we are thinking), but there are […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We review A fundamental of project planning, execution, and incurring risk. Risk is the answer to the question, “What could possibly go wrong?” The answer is, “Many things could go wrong.” Some of the possible wrong, however, is avoidable. We can prepare better and ensure we do better. The key word in […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some of the best-written pieces were done “on the spur of the moment” at a writing event. That includes week-long events and one-hour events. The summary above is true in my experience. I have read pieces written in five-minute exercises, “Okay, everyone write. I will ring the bell in five minutes or […]

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by Dwayne Phillips What could possibly go wrong with moving all your development to the cloud? At least ask the question. Programmers are running to cloud-based integrated development environments (IDEs). Once again, consumers run away from bad services, in this case the IT department, and towards better services, in this case cloud providers. This comes […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Never by surprised at what some persons consider to be “fun.” Consider this when managing risk. Recently, Microsoft put an Artificial Intelligence system called Tay on Twitter or something to learn how to chat. Some persons found it and taught it how to chat like a jerk. Microsoft wasn’t prepared for that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When you rely upon things from other people, you are sometimes greatly disappointed. This holds for programming computers. Are you a “full-stack developer?” Do you argue about what a full-stack developer is? Have you been asked, “Given this problem, what stack would you use?” Sigh. Since the pre-historic times of computer programming, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Often, greater efficiency means sharing resources that were previously not shared. When a shared resource breaks, everyone suffers. Twenty years ago I worked in a computing lab that suffered great improvements in efficiency. Yes, we improved and suffered at the same time. We began sharing resources. We had computers that were idle […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Simple yet oft-forgotten principles: commit to only what I can control. If I commit to things that are outside my control, I am assuming risk. I ran into the situation recently There are many times in my life when I am surprised to find people doing things that go against time-proven principles. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are practices that time has proven to be worthwhile. Someone in school drilled them into us. We vowed to avoid them as soon as school was out, but life eventually catches us. I have lost track of the number of times I have seen this on the job. We have a […]

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