Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Confronted with a big mess? What do you fix first? What order? Try this suggestion. I once entered a job where everything was a mess. Chaos? Well, I won’t write that chaos reigned as that implies there was some order someplace. I found none. It was a mess, where to start? I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes I wonder what smart people are doing. They must have something happening behind the scenes because smart people can’t be this stupid. I recently sat in an airliner for about 20 hours during a couple days time. In my past, I did this frequently, but not so much lately. A couple […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Often, perceptions and other ghosts cause us to believe things. Go back to a fundamental question. The world is coming to an end. Nothing is right. Everyone is against this. What else have I told myself? What else did I “know?” All were hunches, perceptions, gut feel, and such. Sigh. All is […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An old technique that always surfaces confusion and moves us towards clarity. Me: Let’s draw a picture of this so I can understand it better. Person A: We don’t need to waste time with that. We all know what it is. …a little while later… Person A: See, we set it up […]

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by Dwayne Phillips For 30 years persons have asked me questions about analysis. I continue to give the wrong answer. “How are your analysis skills?” I remember the question as if was asked this morning. I was coming out of grad school and trying to find a job. It was 1986 (yikes, that long ago). […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Often “plans” are merely “ideas.” Ideas suffice if they are small enough. We have a lot of plans where I work and recreate. The trouble is, I can’t ever seem to find them. No one can produce an artifact that records the plan. Truth is, the plan is in the mind of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Another fundamental question in systems engineering. Like the rest of the questions, ask with caution. Ever ask the titular question at work? Ever ask it out loud and expect an answer? Perhaps you are a systems engineer. Perhaps your workplace needs a systems engineer. The question seeks to find the reason behind […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we have to stop, go back to basics, and learn what we are trying to do before we try to do it. Stupid, right? How in the world could I run off and start working before knowing what it is I am supposed to do? Trust. Someone I trusted told me […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The follies and pitfalls of a trade study. One of the more wasteful things governments, persons who work for governments, do is commission a trade study. Go forth, study something, and report back to us. Time passes. Persons run about asking questions and reading readings. The money flows. Keyboards clickety-clack, spots appear […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Agile development is not an excuse for knowing what you did, why you did it, and how you did it. You’re doing agile development. You hold a meeting to start a sprint (different methods use different names for this). You sprint! You meet again at the end of the sprint. What did […]

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