Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

There is something to the concept of momentum where a body in motion continues in motion. That even works with mental activity.

Momentum works. Even with the mind. That doesn’t make sense, but in my experience it seems to be true.

Examples:

• For over 700 weeks (13+ years) I have viewed the Internet and kept notes
• Write two blog posts a week (12+ years)
• Read ten pages a night (30 minutes) in technical texts
• Write one short story every week
• Write 30 minutes every day
• Jot daily activities in a Steno Pad (30+ years on this one)

The list goes on. There are other lists for other persons. The result is the same: Start a streak; keep it going, and still keep it going. One day it becomes unthinkable to stop.

by Dwayne Phillips

The ability to immediately talk at length about a topic often shows a lack of forethought.

“I could talk for hours about this.”

I have heard that many times. I have said it a few times. What I later learned after saying it myself was that I had failed to think about “this.” I didn’t quite understand “this,” I had not organized what little I did know, and I wasn’t able to state cogent thought.

Sometimes—unfortunately—I have sat while others started talking at length about “this.” Rambles and rumbles and other things like that followed at length.

Often the “talk for hours” was cut short by the other person asking me to write an organized, clear explanation for what was in their head. They didn’t have the time for such banalities as clarity and brevity. “Someone like me” could do that for them. It seems that banal persons like me were good for little else than tending to the details. They, however, needed to move on to create other original creative concepts.

This is a variation on the old saying, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

Please, take more time.

by Dwayne Phillips

Just because something survived and thrived doesn’t mean it was a good idea. There are other explanations.

Good ideas bubble to the top. Market success shows those good ideas. Bad ideas fizzle. They don’t make it anywhere. Well, maybe these statements are true, but maybe the aren’t.

I see things that have survived the test of time and the marketplace. Close analysis reveals all sorts of problems. Why was the thing built that way? There must be a good reason because it survived, right? Perhaps not.

Bad ideas can survive as well as good ones (maybe even better than good ones). A celebrity stood next to the bad idea; it took off in the marketplace. The market wanted something like this, the bad idea was in the room, people bought it. The bad idea was the best idea that anyone had at the time; it survived.

There are more explanations of how and why a bad idea survived. That’s just the way some things happen. Let us not, however, infer that market success equals good idea. This is especially true in how something is implemented, i.e., what makes it work. I have seen many successful systems that were ugly under the hood. The technical debt was so large that it was difficult to calculate. The system needed to be refactored or rebuilt on the inside. Long-term success depends on someone understanding that the system that had short-term success was a bad idea and fixing it before time catches up with it.

Remember WordStar or WordPerfect or Lotus 123? These were software products that once dominated the market. There are now gone. Look them up in Wikipedia. Maybe you can find floppy disks for them in someone’s closet (like mine).

If something is working, fix it before someone discovers that it was a bad idea.

by Dwayne Phillips

Once stripped of all the extras, the great majority of computers systems we use are CRUD. And that is okay.

We invented computers to compute, i.e., to calculate things. 1+2=3 and so on.

We also learned that computers are good at storing information. We put information in the computer, it is there. We can later retrieve the information. If we want, we can update or change the information (I have a new area code (again)). And, we can delete the information. No longer needed. I need the computer’s storage for something else. That last one isn’t as important these days as computers seem to have unlimited storage capacity.

Hence, we had the CRUD system: Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete.

Microsoft Word is a CRUD system for words. Excel is a CRUD system for finance and database and whatever other ways we use Excel. PowerPoint is a CRUD system for presentations. We go on and on. Jira is a CRUD system for developing software. Facebook is a CRUD system for telling our friends things. Twitter is a CRUD system for telling our friends short things. YouTube is a CRUD system for videos.

Most of us, most of the time, we use these basic CRUD systems. That is fine. Electronic creation, storage, changing, and deleting information is quite helpful. Imagine a world where everything was stilled stored on paper.

Still, I think we should understand what we are doing with the computer: it is just a big, fancy CRUD system.

by Dwayne Phillips

For some reason, we often run away from the words that we want most to convey.

I work with persons who are trying to write. They show me their draft, we talk, we walk through the words, and I ask questions. The questions usually lead to grimaces and twisted expressions, struggled breathing, quick exhales, and the like.

I know the line of questioning works when the other person says something like,

• What I’m trying to say is…
• What I’m trying to get across is…
• I want them to know…

“Great!” I tell them. “Write those words.”

Such from me usually leads to, “but, if I did that…” If the writer wrote what she was trying to say, the reader would know what the writer wanted them to know.

Somehow, that basic concept breaks some rule that the frustrated writer was taught at an impressionable age. Someone once declared that it was best to lead the reader around in circles with hints and riddles instead of clearly and briefly stating what it was the writer wanted to state.

Folks, stop listening to whatever that person told you. Write what you are trying to say (or is that “write what you are trying to write” or something?). Say what you are trying to say. Write what you want the reader to know. Be clear and brief.

If you are writing a mystery novel, okay, don’t state the name of the culprit on the first page. Go around in circles with little clues and hints and riddles.

Otherwise, write what you are trying to say. Write those words.

by Dwayne Phillips

Win-win situations mean that both parties win. Great! There are, however, losers as well.

We love win-win situations. Both parties in the situation leave better than they were before. Who wouldn’t like that? The loser wouldn’t.

But both parties are better. What loser? Of course there is a “loser.” Of course there is someone standing in the room who does not “win” with the two winners. Perhaps the loser stays the same; perhaps the loser becomes worse. Nevertheless, there are others nearby who do not win with the winners.

Huh? Perhaps this happens so often that we don’t notice. The main cause is that that other person in the room isn’t as involved as the two winners. The other person’s concerns and desires are not in the conversation. Hence, that other person doesn’t “win.”

Well, “Speak up. Get involved. Get in the game. Don’t sit on the sidelines.” Of course those cliches make since, but that doesn’t mean they occur.

Involved in a win-win situation? Please take a few moments to scan the room and find other persons who are present. How will the win-win affect them? Are you interested enough to bring them along? We should be.

by Dwayne Phillips

In order to move on with other matter, from time to time we accept approximations and use them. That is fine as long as we acknowledge such.

Water boils at 212° F. Well, sort of. There have been many experiments performed on various things we call “water.” When is “water” really “water” and really not? There are different degrees of purity of “water” and each has an average boiling point. And, after all, what is the definition of “boiling?” Sigh. This becomes complicated. I thought we had settled on this.

The temperature of a healthy person is 98.6° F. Well, if you thought the temperature of boiling water was complicated, it is nothing compared to this one. This goes back a century to experiments done here and there on these folks and those folks and the thermometers weren’t that good, and … Sigh. This is really complicated. I thought we had settled on this.

You know, 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Okay, enough approximations. I won’t even begin to shred this accepted approximation. I though we had settled on this.

These are examples of accepted approximations (well, maybe we don’t accept the divorce rate approximation). We could argue and experiment without end on these things. Some folks still make a lifetime career from further experiments and publications and discussions on these. Most of us, however, accept the approximations, use them, and move on.

Until an approximation breaks something we are trying to do. Yes, that happens. The boiling point of water rears its ugly head (does a boiling point have a “head?” Can we call its head “ugly?”) and we try to understand why our system is breaking.

Oh, we accepted an accepted approximation without much thought. Ooooh, the key phrase “without much thought.” Yikes. That is a killer.

Understand the approximations we are accepting. Do they matter in our system? If yes, think some more to understand how the approximation matters. Ignore the approximation at our peril.

by Dwayne Phillips

Should we be using systems engineering on this project? Here is a simple test.

I think systems engineering is useful and brings many benefits. That is why I wrote a short book on the topic. The book is free here.

Should we be using systems engineering on this project? Here is

The Systems Engineering Test:

If two or three persons can keep the entire project in their heads, don’t use systems engineering. Otherwise, use it.

There it is. Pretty simple. Trouble is, must of us most of the time answer, “Yes, we have it all right up here,” when we really don’t. We are smart enough or good enough or something that satisfies our ego so we can skip all that stuff where we ask questions and record things and check things and all that stuff kind of stuff.

As I explain in the book I mentioned earlier, we don’t need many fancy, expensive, difficult-to-learn tools to use systems engineering and delight our customers. The techniques are more important than the tools. Pencil and paper and manila folders work well for most projects.

Use the test. Answer humbly. Proceed. Best wishes.

by Dwayne Phillips

Linear Regression is an old, basic technique to predict the future given the past. It seems that its utility has been forgotten by many.

How did we get here? Why didn’t anyone see this coming?

These are a couple questions I heard recently when groups of persons gathered to discuss … well, big booboos (mistakes) in finance. It seems that incoming funds did not match what was predicted; expenses were what was predicted, and, uh, well, the money ran out.

Why didn’t anyone see this coming? Seems someone forgot about linear regression. This is a technique created in the first decade of the 1800s. You plot a few data points from early in an endeavor. You draw a line that fits those points. You look where that line goes out into the future. The formula for this looks daunting, but calculating it is pretty easy. Excel and other spreadsheets have an easy-to-use function that does this for us. Viola’. Done.

Of course there are many cases in which this simple prediction fails. Things happen. People happen. Times change. Hence, some thought must be applied. Still, this little technique does predict the future pretty well.

Why is it not used? The biggest reason I have observed is that people want to believe that things will work out. Bad news is not welcome. Bad news simply must be incorrect. Things will change for the better.

Question: If we have done such-and-such eight weeks in a row, why will we do differently in the future?

Answer: Well, there are many possible good answers. Those answers require us to change. We don’t like to change and we don’t know how to create change.

Hence, this little, old, simple tool works most of the time. How did we forget about it?

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 them in English is the same. This representation and these words are their descriptions and are similar to a map of a location. The map says they are the same.

We know a smartphone is not just another telephone. Everyone who has ever used both know they are vastly different with vastly different designs and purposes. That is the reality; that is akin to the terrain we see and while hiking or driving. We know a hill from a flat piece of land because we experience it.

In the case of the phone, we trust the terrain and not the map.

In the case of building systems, we often trust the map and not the terrain. We believe what we read and not what we experience. The schedule says we are almost done. We look at the system and see that it will be months before it is done. The spec says the system is fast. Our tests show otherwise. Marketing says the system will sell big. Our test users roll their eyes. Which do we believe?

Believe the terrain, not the map. Ignore this a our peril.