by Dwayne Phillips We often have the choice of learning now or later. Often we don’t have the time to learn now, so we put it off until it really hurts. Gosh, we are in a hurry so much of the time. We just can’t pause to think, reflect, and learn at this moment. Some […]
Learn Now or Later
September 26th, 2024 · No Comments
Tags: Agility · Analysis · Decide · Learning
A Thousand Assistants
September 16th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips This is a tried and true method of gathering requirements and specifying systems. Imagine you had a thousand assistants. There are various methods of gathering requirements and specifying systems. A basic one is to imagine a thousands assistants awaiting your request. If you had a thousand assistants, what would you have them […]
Tags: Analysis · Design · General Systems Thinking · Requirements · Simple · Systems
The Inner Circle Versus Too Many People in the Room
September 2nd, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips We can have too many people in the room to discuss something. We can also become locked in an inner circle where no one else understands what we are doing. There should be a balance. There are too many people in the room: Twenty people (pick a number) is too many. There […]
Tags: Analysis · Communication · Concepts · Ideas · Management · Meetings
The Hero and the System We Really Use
July 1st, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes the system we really use is not the system we tell people we use. “This system won’t work,” said the person whose job it was to analyze a system. But, the system works, i.e., the group of persons using the system that won’t work seem to get along just fine. In […]
Tags: Analysis · Fear · General Systems Thinking · Management · Systems
There Is No Crying in Baseball and Other Self-Contradictions
April 22nd, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Take caution with negative statements as they often contradict themselves. “There is no crying in baseball,” is a famous line from the movie A League of Their Own. (My wife says that is a movie about sisters. I say it is a movie about baseball.) That is a self-contradictory statement. One person […]
Tags: Analysis · Appearances · Clarity · Communication · Integrity · Learning · Meaning · Writing
Next-Level Everything
March 4th, 2024 · No Comments
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 […]
Tags: Analysis · Competence · Education · Growth · Improvement · Knowledge · Learning
Poisoned Machine Learning
January 29th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips We have yet another problem with machine learning. This one, however, has an easy solution. Several years ago I wrote of a fundamental problem with machine learning. I guess we have yet another problem being called “poisoned” machine learning. With poisoning, someone knows that I am about to “learn the machine” something […]
Tags: Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Concepts · Data Science · Machine Learning
Hollywood and Fighting Against What We Do
June 26th, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we fight against something with all our might only to discover that are foe is ourselves and what we do everyday. As I write this, there is a writer’s strike in Hollywood. Note, I am not in Hollywood writing this as a writer who is on a writer’s strike. Now that […]
Tags: Analysis · Communication · Consulting · General Systems Thinking · Jobs · Writing
Communism—The Same Old Corruption
June 1st, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Look at the world. Those countries with seemingly unsolvable problems were under communist rule the longest. This post is a bit different as I delve into some political science and recent world history. It appears that the countries on earth that accepted communism the longest are the biggest messes. Russia is a […]
The Stupid Hunters (still hunting down stupid everywhere)
May 8th, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Aha! I was sort of right. Now companies have teams of folks hunting down stupid in their systems to keep the world safe from stupid. Way back in 2015, I wrote a blog post about being a stupid hunter. This is not a hunter who is stupid, but a hunter whose job […]
Tags: Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Competence · Stupid · Systems · Technology · Testing · Visibility · Work