Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Here come the AI assistants. They will do amazing things for us. Nothing new here. We’ve had these for decades. Nice, but not new. I’ve seen several AI assistants recently. They are usually called “agents.” Well, “agent” is shorter and easier to spell than “assistant,” so I guess that is an improvement. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is a question we should constantly ask. Try the simplest thing to be, to do, to have. Several years ago, I posed a question to participants at a conference session I was facilitating. The design problem was about storing information from a business. I wanted a design of a system that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The most important computer processor ever made was the Intel 8087 (well, a little exaggeration). Spend more money on hardware or more money on smarts? The decision is still with us. It was 1980. Intel had just released the 8086 CPU—a computer on a chip that worked on 16 bits at a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes the better solution is to not provide a solution. After all, who decided that this was a problem and I was the person to solve it? “Here is your problem, and here is my solution. Use it,” said a confident problem solver. I’m a smart guy. I can see things others […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Show it, break it, fix it, make it better. My two older grandchildren were at my house recently. They are both teenagers now. The older was showing the younger a game that the older programmed. The younger tried an example that broke the game. Angst, frustration, embarrassment, etc. Then the older set […]

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by Dwayne Phillips For those who have the resources to choose the problems for those who can solve them, please, choose wisely. Smart scientists, engineers, and problem solvers abound. Well, maybe not abound, but given the population of the earth, there are millions of these folks. What problems are they trying to solve? Rocket engines? […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An old adage, one that I have experienced to be true, is that a person will tell another person the solution to all their problems in the first five minutes of the first conversation. Many years ago, an experienced consultant told me, “The client will tell the consultant the solution to all […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Let’s do what we can do bring more people into the solution-providing space. I am going to repeat some things I wrote in a blog post in 2015. In researching today’s post, I found that old post and wondered a bit at how good it was. Anyway, Linus’ Law is: “given enough […]

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by Dwayne Phillips New problem? Need a new solution. First, try the simplest thing. It happened again at work the other day. We have a new problem (new day, new problem). We need a new solution. What will we do? Hmmm, there are so many options. Each option with its good things and bad things […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We were once told, “Don’t bring me a problem without a solution.” I hope most of us have ignored that. There was a time when I was repeatedly told at work, “Don’t bring me a problem without a solution.” The idea was that bosses had enough to do already and didn’t need […]

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