Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Remote work has its efficiencies and time savers. It isn’t all efficient. There are parts that are wasteful. There are places where we multiply waste. Beware. Learn.

Remote work saves a lot of time. Some of my colleagues spend several hours a day commuting. Working remote, as some of us have done recently, makes their days much more efficient. They work more, have more leisure time, and have a better life.

What could be wrong with that? I mean we have all these Zooming-Slacking-Teams by which we stay in touch. This is great. No trade-offs, right?

Sorry. We always trade one thing for another. Remote work has its inefficiencies.

These audio-video-remote meetings have their stumbles. When is someone finished talking so I can say what I want? What is it that causes us to talk over one another and stop and start and wait and… If you have been in a few remote meetings, you have experienced it. I guess there is enough lag in transmission and reception that our timing is unnatural and we stumble.

Inefficient meetings.

And then we over compensate. Being remote, we want to show everyone that we still accomplish as much. We want to show everyone that we still communicate as much.

We schedule more remote meetings than we have face-to-face meetings when we are really “at work.” Instead of two meetings of half-an-hour each, we have five. And each half-hour meeting is preceded by five or ten minutes of getting on early so we are sure to be on at the appointed time.

Too many meetings.

Gosh. This was supposed to be easy. This was supposed to be all good with no bad.

We could learn to make the inefficient meetings more efficient. We are pretty smart and can learn, right? And we could also learn not to schedule the extra meetings. We are pretty smart and can learn, right?

Let’s be pretty smart and learn. Then again, something tells me that we will find some other problems. Nothing is perfect. There are always trade offs.

by Dwayne Phillips

There are persons and things that we don’t notice much, but who keep everything working and everyone smiling. Please notice and appreciate.

lip: noun, the edge of a hollow container or an opening.
“drawing her finger around the lip of the cup”

Behold the wonder of the lip, that protruding edge that allows gravity to hold the lid on something. The lip really does a great favor to all of us. It is so simple, yet it works continuously.

At this point, I am supposed to draw some similarity between the lip and some persons in your workplace who are always working. I leave this as an exercise to the reader. You can do this.

At this point, I am supposed to draw some similarity between the lip and some software app that you use without noticing it. I leave this as an exercise to the reader. You can do this.

At this point, I am supposed to draw some similarity between the lip and some other person or thing that goes without much notice but keeps everything functioning or everyone smiling. I leave this as an exercise to the reader. You can do this.

by Dwayne Phillips

I don’t like the metaphor of the software “pipeline,” never have. Here is one explanation why.

I recently wrote of my distaste for the metaphor of the software stack. Now I express a similar distaste for the software pipeline.

Perhaps this goes back to the Unix pipe—shown with the “|” vertical bar. In Unix, and henceforth in all the xnix variations and Linux distributions, different operations were connected by the pipe. The output of one operation flowed into the input of the next. These were all file based in one way or another. The pipe did nothing but eliminate the names of the temporary files.

Pipes in the real world are transport mechanisms. They do no processing on there own. (The lone exception being the heat exchanger, and I cannot think of a software equivalent.)

Somehow and somewhere, we consider software pipelines as doing some processing from the trail of idea to running software. I fail to see this. But again, it is merely a figure of speech and we shouldn’t take it seriously.

If we are going to use some words, we might as well use useful words as they take just as much effort the first time and much less effort the rest of the time as we try to explain what we meant by using the wrong word.

Just a thought. You can only be mad at me for ten minutes.

by Dwayne Phillips

Whatever method you use to accomplish your work, you are choosing it over something else. You gain something with your choice; you lose something with your choice. That is your trade.

“We do DevSecOps,” said one practitioner. “We do agile,” said another. “We do what we feel like doing everyday,” said a third.

Fine. What did you trade away to do what you are doing? The answer is usually a blank stare.

We choose what we choose because we want it on some day for some reason. We trade away something in return.

Agile is faster than waterfall in some situations. It is slower in other situations. The same is true for DevSecOps. The same will be true for whatever comes next.

Each method works better for some people in some situations at some times. Nothing is perfect, and pretending otherwise is merely pretending.

Iterative methods of all kinds lose efficiency when you know what you want. Step-by-step review methods lose efficiency in uncertainty. If you don’t believe me, let’s walk through some long examples.

We usually trade efficiency for certainty in methods. Sometimes we trade other more important things. Sometimes what we are trading the presence of some people whom we like more than others. Ouch. That last one hurts, but sometimes it is true.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is a basic thing to do when working as a group to create and refine ideas.

This procedure works with just about any task where a group of persons is working together to create and refine ideas. One example is gathering requirements and creating preliminary designs. Another is outlining or formulating a document ranging from a business proposal to a script for a play.

Use several white boards or flip charts or whatever you have. Have on such board for each step or set of ideas.

Stand at one board, work it, gather ideas from the group until the room becomes quiet for a few moments. Stop at this board.

Move to the next board, work it, gather ideas from the group until the room becomes quiet for a few moments. Stop at this board.

Move to the next board and repeat.

Keep moving to the next board until you reach the last board and repeat.

Go back to the first board and repeat all of the above. This is the “walk around” idea. We have walked all the way around the room and we return to the first board.

Review, change, and continue.

How many times do we walk around the room? When the ideas stop, we stop.

by Dwayne Phillips

The current situation brings with it the usual proclamations by those who, despite public appearances, appear to be illiterate. We need not join them.

The current crisis brings with it, as most do, a new set of slang and expressions. Many of these are issued by public officials who, by all appearances, are educated. Most, however, seem to be illiterate.

Social Distancing: No one is asking for social distancing. They are asking for physical distancing. I can stand in my driveway and have a deep conversation with my neighbor as he stands in his driveway some 50 feet away. We are physically distance yet socially close. Many religious organizations are having meetings online. They are socially quite close while being physically quite distant.

Virtual Meetings (virtual weddings, virtual funerals, virtual classes, etc.): Back in the old days, when my mother talked on the telephone for an hour with a friend, no one called that a virtual conversation. They were talking on the telephone. People who are distant from one another (from afar or “tele”) have actual conversations, actual meetings, actual etc. even though they are distant from one another. We can have a tele-meeting or a remote meeting. Those are actual meetings, not virtual meetings. A virtual meeting is something that appears to be a meeting, but actually isn’t a meeting. I am not sure what that would be.

These are troublesome times. Illiteracy need not characterize them.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes we don’t do some things at work merely because they are inconvenient.

“I don’t want to do such-and-such,” said busy, hardworking person at work.

“It is inconvenient to me,” thought the same person but didn’t say it aloud.

Work can be fun and rewarding or as some have said, “Pleasant, productive, and profitable.” Some tasks at work aren’t so pleasant, but we do them so we can reach the other things most of the time.

And then there are days when we simply … well, we skip those things that are inconvenient. No one will notice, much. No one will have to work extra to make up, much. It will be okay, probably. Besides. There is always “besides.”

Yes, there is plenty of busy work at work. Things that really don’t need to happen. Then, however, there are things that are inconvenient that need to happen. Let’s admit that some tasks are inconvenient, but let’s do them anyways.

by Dwayne Phillips

Inspiration for something to writer or a “starter” is everywhere. Here is a simple method of finding it.

Looking for something to write? Looking for a starter for the next piece to write?

1. Go to any book shelf.
2. Grab any book.
3. Open to any page.
4. Point to any line.
5. Copy that line.
6. Keep going.

For example, I am sitting at a bar in a restaurant. I go to Gutenberg.org and click on one of their Latest eBooks. It happens to be, “The Castaways of the Flag: The Final Adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson” by Jules Verne (I’ve heard of him, but not the book). I click on the HTML online version and randomly scroll down.

I click on a line, it reads, “Captain Gould rushed down into his cabin and came back with a pistol in his hand. But he was not given time to use it.”

I continue…The damage had been done. The drunken sociopath had steered the yacht parallel to the coming wave. Gould tucked the pistol into his coat pocket (perhaps it would be of use in the coming days) and grabbed a flotation device from the wall. The yacht rolled slowly and nothing would stop it from the disastrous conclusion. The drunk didn’t know what was about to happen, but Gould did…

The beginning of a survival-at-sea short story or novel or screenplay.

Next.

by Dwayne Phillips

Writing is tough on any day. Things now are tough for some of us in some ways on some days. Writing is still tough and still possible. Let’s stop kidding ourselves.

I have read a dozen blog posts about “writing in tough times.” These are tough times, right? Well, in some ways on some days these are tough times for some writers.

I have not heard about massive electrical outages anywhere. I have not heard about massive Internet outages anywhere. I have not heard that chairs have been taken from homes to be destroyed.

Sit in the chair, put your hands on the keyboard and write. One keystroke, one word, one line, one page. WRITE.

No one is stopping anyone from writing.

And if the power goes out? Grab a pencil and a pile of paper and WRITE.

No one is topping anyone from writing.

W R I T E

But, but, but…no buts. W R I T E.

But it is tough now? It is always tough. We write because we write. We know it is tough. We write.

Kids worn you to a frazzle? Write about that. Job lost? Write about that. Afraid to go anywhere? Write about that. Afraid to write anything? Write about that.

Any questions?

by Dwayne Phillips

The new boss arrives. Everyone tells her what they are doing all at once in great detail. The new boss is “sipping from the fire hose.”

I heard this “sipping from the fire hose” phrase a thousand times in my career. The new boss arrives. She is inundated with details during the first few days and weeks. None of it makes any sense. Still, the “information” flushes her brain.

None of the information is summarized. None of the information is organized. None of the information is anything-ized that will have it make sense.

Putting the information into a format that makes sense and is understandable requires work on the part of those who have the information. That is W O R K. And that is part of their jobs. Refusing to package the information into an -izable format is part of their jobs.

Hence, all this “sipping from the fire hose” is a demonstration of those persons simply refusing to do their job. Oh. That’s not good.

Hence, the new boss has learned her first lesson about the persons at work.