Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips It is important to remember whose words we are discussing. If you mentioned something, we are discussing your words. If I mentioned something, we are discussing my words. There are ways to back away from our words. I read the words from the PowerPoint. They were wrong. Simply wrong. 1 + 2 […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A basic questions that managers should ask above the noise and bustle of the day. Every group needs a person who asks a nagging question or two every day or week or month or two. Is this working? Of course this is working. What do you think? We are all busy; we […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It is rare that we can understand something from one and only one perspective. We need to walk around the other sides to gain other perspectives. There is a method of describing something called the DoD Architecture Framework or DoDAF. Sometimes DoDAF is quite useful, but sometimes persons misuse it and … […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We tend to want complex things. Too simple shows that we didn’t work hard, right? No, that is usually wrong. It happened again at work this week… Someone wanted a couple of sentences that summarized a project. The project had been running for ten years and is a success. Lots of people […]

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by Dwayne Phillips People in distant lands use the same words differently. Time and generations create distant lands. I was fascinated by this story about younger folks putting things on TikTok et al. Then older folks who admit people to college and hire them for jobs noticed those things. The younger folks spoke in the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Today’s practice of delivering software and systems emphasizes continuous delivery. Today’s practice, however, fails at this. Technology is not the problem. CI/CD is continuous integration and continuous delivery (or deployment). Work everyday. As each little increment of capability is finished, deliver it. Perhaps we deliver every day and perhaps several times every […]

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by Dwayne Phillips For what it is worth, and I think it is worth much, read or review Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” I didn’t take many English courses in college (just one). While happy, at the time, to skip needless courses, I sometimes regret what I could have learned. Then again, I was […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Old metaphors indicate many problems. One result, however, is that they prevent thought. Thinking is a pretty good practice, and I discourage anything that reduces it. The old metaphor should be avoided. George Orwell wrote about this in his essay on Politics and the English Language. Orwell wrote it much better than […]

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by Dwayne Phillips No one lied, they just omitted some information. There are ways to find the omissions and those things are some of the more important pieces of information we need. No one lied, they just omitted a few bits and pieces of information. And, oh, if we had those bits and pieces of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This post is about the person who edits. Most organizations no longer employ an Editor, and that practice is fraught with imminent peril. Consider The Editor: An Editor is a professional who is the voice of a company, ensuring that all written materials are accurate and of high quality. They work with […]

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