Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

It is simple math: the more words presented the more errors present. Rats.

There is a big benefit to brevity: fewer errors.

One way to consider errors is to look at the number of errors per the number of words. Something like five errors per one-hundred words. That is 95% correct and is pretty darn good.

Given 500 words on a typed page, that means 25 errors. Seems like a lot, huh? Well, if our piece of writing is two pages long, that is 50 errors. Three pages? 75 errors.

Aha, a simple way to reduce 75 errors down to only 25 errors: delete two of the three pages.

But, but, and but. No buts. It is simple math. Don’t ya’ just hate simple math? There must be a trick or a catch here, right? Nope. Simple math prevails.

Brevity reduces the number of errors.

by Dwayne Phillips

Meet me at the big oak tree outside of town at dusk. They said something like that in the old Westerns. It makes sense to still do this.

There was always a showdown or something in the old Westerns. The big oak tree a mile outside of town at dusk. How did they know how far a mile was? I never could understand that. They always made it though.

That big oak tree was a landmark. Everyone knew where it was. Dusk was a specific time. You couldn’t miss it. A specific place and an specific time.

“Let’s discuss our understanding of the requirements Friday.” A specific place (requirements understanding) and a specific time (Friday).

In some respects, that isn’t flexible or agile or DevSecOps or some other recent thing that we’ve convinced ourselves is better. A landmark never moved. There was only one big oak tree a mile outside of town. Dusk was dusk—no flexibility.

The landmark, however, removed a lot variables. All that was left was to discuss the complex items that would lead to a successful endeavor. All those variables out of the way. The landmark is a big eraser, a big trash can, some other metaphor that helps us to great things. Find the landmark and use it.

by Dwayne Phillips

Philosophy and utopia are great until reality punches everything in the nose—philosophically speaking of course.

Philosophical discussions are great. They may stretch the mind to see other points of view or possibilities. They may lead to better ways.

Philosophy, however, is philosophy and not reality. We need to keep that in mind. A recent article shows that some billionaires are once again trying to build a new place where they can live anew without the technical and other debt that exists in all other places on earth. Great stuff—the stuff of dreams and the outcome of some philosophic discussions.

There is one significant problem with the new utopia envisioned: it all comes to an end when someone else drives a column of tanks down Utopia Ave and says, “Your money or your life.”

No, in order to survive in reality, Utopia needs a Utopian Armed Forces or something to defend what it has. The barbarians at the gate will eventually knock down the gate and do what barbarians have done for centuries. They will pillage, plunder, and do that third thing, too.

Philosophical discussions are great. Sometimes reality collides with the outcome of philosophical discussions.

Okay, Utopia needs a lever. Utopia needs knowledge of something that the rest of the planet needs to exist. Utopia can use that lever to keep the barbarians outside the gate. That’s what the Swiss have done, right? No one attacks the Swiss because everyone’s money is in the Swiss banks. Maybe, but the Swiss also have a large, well-trained, and dedicated civilian defense force. The Swiss defense forces are good enough or have a good enough reputation to make invading Switzerland too costly.

Perhaps the next vision of Utopia will have such a lever that philosophers have discussed for centuries. Perhaps not. We shall see.

by Dwayne Phillips

We want AI systems to act like us. Or do we? Perhaps we want AI systems to act like some of us. But who is “us” and who is “not us?”

Testing shows that the latest and greatest large language models will generate bad information about political campaigns. That is wrong; those systems need to be fixed. Right? Maybe.

This brings to mind a research paper I read recently: is the objective of these AI systems to mimic human behavior. Is the objective to teach facts?

If the system is to mimic humans, now and then it will say “the world is flat” and “the moon landings were faked.” That is because, sometimes some of us will say some of those things.

That, however, is ridiculous. Systems shouldn’t repeat those foolish things that some foolish people say sometimes. Of course “foolish” is subjective, and what I consider foolish is perfectly rational to some other folks.

That is the human condition. Is the system supposed to be like us or just some of us? To be like all of us means foolish statements come from the system on some occasions. To be like some of some of us means the statements agree with what some of us would say. Things said by some of the other folks will be barred.

And then we have to decide who is “us” and who is “not us.” Simple, those folks not in the room with me are “not us.” Everyone of us will agree with me. Right? Wrong.

Funny, our inventions are like us, and we have to decide what our inventions will do. We are an odd lot.

by Dwayne Phillips

History is filled with great accomplishments accomplished by people who shouldn’t be able to accomplish them. While not accomplishing great accomplishments, I find that I was almost always under qualified.

I read history. Some would tell me that I read and reread too much history. One item I read repeatedly is someone is chosen to or pushed into an endeavor for which they are (seemingly) under qualified. After some time, these under-qualified persons achieve beyond all reasonable expectations.

Perhaps the expect-ors, i.e., those who expect these people to fail, are simply miserable at expecting or predicting the future. The great majority of us fail at predicting the future.

Perhaps the under-qualified persons don’t understand their lack of qualifications. Perhaps they accept the challenge with an “Oh yeah? I’ll show you!” attitude. Ambition is an amazing thing.

Another amazing thing is confidence instilled by a chooser of the under qualified. “I am choosing you to accomplish this as we all need this accomplished, so go accomplish it.”

Me? Yes, you. You CAN do it.

But I am under qualified to inspire the under qualified to accomplish what seemingly they cannot accomplish.

I think we are back at the beginning. Under qualified? Go accomplish it anyway.

by Dwayne Phillips

Stretching the mind is generally a good thing. There are many ways to do this, so just do it.

Over the years, I have spent hours playing the guitar. If I spend half-an-hour a day playing day after day, what I play starts to resemble jazz. I have some sort of lifetime membership to Next Level Guitar. The idea there is I open a new lesson, can’t play a bit of it, but work on the lesson for a week. A few weeks later, I come back to it, and I can play it.

At this time, once a day, I go to Cornell University’s arXiv site and read most of a paper. These are pre-publication research papers. As such, they stretch the current state of the art. I don’t understand everything that I read, but I find that a few weeks later I can discuss the topic of the paper. Somehow, time and more papers have increased my brain in some way.

I just picked up “An Introduction to Statistical Learning.” I bought this a couple of years ago, read the first 100 pages, but became side tracked with something else. I am reading again. I don’t understand everything, but as above, I am learning more than I realize.

These are next-level exercises. I try to do something that is beyond what I can do. I am stretching. I find that to be a good thing. Perhaps I don’t “get it” all, but I seem to understand more.

This can be quite rewarding to me. This can also be quite annoying to others. I need to learn to exercise and stretch and not tell others too much about it. Thank you for reading.

by Dwayne Phillips

We often use the vocabulary and ceremonies of a prescribed practice without actually doing anything worthwhile.

Daily standup, peer review, prototype, minimum viable product, agility, AI, agent, etc.: examples of vocabulary that makes it appear as if something good is happening.

Do they have a minimum viable product? Is there product much more than the minimum? If, “Yes,” they are merely repeating vocabulary without meeting any definition of such.

“Of course we have daily standup meetings,” said someone when asked about what they do each day.

Attend the daily standup meeting and scratch your head. They actually meet daily and they are standing up. Are they, however, doing anything that accomplishes work?

If the answer is, “No.” that is a ceremony and nothing more.

There is some old saying about what we are told to do, what we document that we do, what we tell people when they ask about what we do, and what we actually do. The point of the old saying is that, “We do what we want, when we want, and how we want. And stop bothering us, we have work to do.”

This is real life on real projects worked by real people. These real people are told the vocabulary and ceremonies they are assigned. Sometimes these real people really use those items as assigned. Sometimes they don’t. These real people aren’t evil. They are busy and are really trying to accomplish real work.

The question I ask is, “Why are we telling these well-meaning people to lie?”

These well-meaning people know the vocabulary and the ceremonies. They would like to be in a project where they could try this vocabulary and these ceremonies. Real-life disturbances always seem to disturb real-life, and they do what they can.

Let’s have some honesty and candor without punishment. “We want to use these words and perform these tasks as prescribed. People push us in other directions. We bend because we are told to. We don’t resist because we need the paycheck (I do have a mortgage and braces on a child’s teeth). Sorry.”

Let is be acceptable for such honest and candid speech. That is something that us managers can do. I think the word is “agile.”

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes, the better thing to do is let people do what they think is best or at least what they think is better on any given day.

“We are a fill-in-the-blank organization. We use best fill-in-the-blank practices as described by fill-in-the-second-blank who described fill-in-the-blank in the seminal blog post on fill-in-the-blank,” said an earnest leader of a team when questioned about their practices.

There are many worthwhile practices. Agile, SCRUM, waterfall, prototyping, documenting, not documenting, etc.

It is worthwhile for an entire organization of thousands of people to use the same practices on thousands of days in thousands of different situations.

It is worthwhile to have a shared and solid foundation. Let’s all start at the beginning with our feet solidly planted on something solid. Life is tough enough to attempt it while juggling 15 balls when off balance.

And let’s add one more worthwhile practice to this list of worthwhile things: let’s let competent persons do what is best, or at least better, on any given day in any given situation.

Well, yeah, but, you see… Of course that last worthwhile practice is a bit scary. What if the competent persons are wrong on this day in this situation? Things would be messed up and we would have a mess and we would have to fix the mess just to get back to zero. What a mess.

I hired these persons to decide what is best or at least what is better. Did I hire the wrong persons? Wait, don’t pin this mess on me. Wait, I was put in a position of hiring. Yes, this mess flows up to me.

And now I have to decide what to do with this mess.

This mess is today’s situation. Let the competent person do what is best, or at least what is better, given this mess. And that includes me. I can do what is best, or at least what is better, given this mess.

If you wanted guarantees when you became a manager, sorry to disappoint you. There are none. We are working with people, not levels of liquid in bottles in manufacturing. There are no lower-control and upper-control levels with people. We do. Some days better, some days worse.

Let’s observe, think, and do what is best, or at least what is better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Once again, thinking at one layer higher than usual may bring insights that prove effective.

There is competence: someone is able to do something well. They know the topic, they know the skills, and they apply them all. The adjective “well” is used often and truthfully.

Then there is meta-competence: this has something to do with being competent with and about competence.

I struggled to find this concept for several decades. I worked in government. Employees were often judged for their abilities. The simple idea being that persons judged to be more competent would be promoted to positions requiring more competence. The simple idea often fell broken on the rocks of reality.

The problem I often found was, “Who are the judges?” I frequently met judges who were not competent. They couldn’t write a sentence, but judged others on their ability to write. They had not read a book or paper on technology in ten years, but judged others on their technical abilities.

We lacked people who were competent about competence, i.e., we had little meta-competence.

At this point, I am supposed to provide the solution to this meta-competence problem. Well, that is the problem. Someone has to judge competence with competence to decide competence, or something like that. A high-level manager needs to hire a hiring expert so that competent people are hired. How does the high-level manager know whom to hire? Who is the hiring expert, i.e., the person with meta-competence. How is the high-level manager supposed to be competent at meta-competence?

At some point, someone has to do the first task and do it well.

Advice? Do it quickly. Judge the results quickly. If the first step was a mistake, change the first step quickly. Time doesn’t always heal all wounds.

by Dwayne Phillips

Take care when confusing lab projects with real products. Both are good, but they are not the same.

In all fields of endeavor, we have lab projects and real products. Both can be good. They, however, are not the same. Sometimes product managers and marketers confuse these at their peril.

Students in graduate school have lab projects. They experiment and write their results. Advanced degrees are awarded. Great stuff.

Sometimes, engineers et al have lab projects at work. They experiment and write their results. In wise organizations, the results carefully and painstakingly become real products sold to consumers. In not-so-wise organizations, the results are hastily declared to be products and sold to consumers who then wince in pain and write bad reviews on Reddit et al.

Experiments don’t produce products that are ready for market. Sure, this happens once a century and it works. The rest of the time, it doesn’t work. Real products take time to refine through engineering, testing, redesign, testing, rework, testing, test marketing, etc. Those things can drive people nuts with the time required. Those things certainly raise the cost and resulting price of the final products. Those things also reduce the chance of horrible reviews on Reddit.

Results of lab projects can be quite informative. Information about what is possible is not a consumer-ready product. We can do better than this.