Working Up

Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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Learn Now or Later

September 26th, 2024 · No Comments

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Tags: Analysis · Chaos

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 […]

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Tags: Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Competence · Stupid · Systems · Technology · Testing · Visibility · Work