by Dwayne Phillips This is something we need. Shopping centers, please read. I’ve seen it many times. An adult steps out of their car in the shopping center parking lot. They have two or more small children with them. All the children are strapped into car seats. Let’s see, unbuckle the oldest child first, or […]
The Parking Lot Concierge
September 21st, 2023 · No Comments
Tags: Adults · Culture · Expectations · Observation · Rest · Security
Someone Else’s Experience
August 21st, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips People have their own experiences. Assuming their experience denies them as a person. Try to avoid such. Each person has their own experience with something. It is often the case that several people have similar experiences. That gives me the luxury of describing some “average” experience and continuing to satisfy the “average” […]
Tags: Adults · Expectations · Learning · Other · Patience · Self
Increments, Perfection, Fear, Candor, and Pride
February 16th, 2023 · No Comments
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 […]
Tags: Communication · DevOps · Expectations · Experiment · Honesty · Ideas · Leadership · Technology
Next Slide, Please
February 2nd, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips This one is finished. Time for the next one. It too will finish, and another one will come after it. Many years ago as a much younger man, I spoke with a much older and wiser man. He was about to leave an assignment and begin another assignment. He had learned the […]
Tags: Expectations · Experiment · Growth · Learning · Time
The Explainers
September 19th, 2022 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips We need more explainers. These are persons who answer the question, “Whatcha’ doin’?” Whatcha’ doin’? Hows’it work? How ya’ doin’? These are simple questions. These are the basic questions we ask others all the time. Often, we repeat the question six or seven times in different forms and still don’t receive an […]
Tags: Brevity · Clarity · Communication · Expectations · Questions
And Why Would They Know That?
September 8th, 2022 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips When assuming that another person already knows something, ask, “And why would they know that?” It happened again the other day at work, someone interrupted a presentation, pointed to something mentioned but not shown, and asked, “But what is that thing? What does it do?” The presenter, unable to hide the aghast […]
Tags: Communication · Expectations · Knowledge · Learning · Work
Three Pages, a Thousand Words Plus Figures
August 18th, 2022 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Any topic and just about any situation. Please provide three pages that contain a thousand words and several figures. Right or wrong, we reach a point in life and history that we need information on this or that. What format? Try the title of this post. On three pieces of standard-size paper […]
Tags: Communication · Expectations · Ideas · Information · Language · Writing
Scale or Interest?
August 15th, 2022 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips This solution didn’t scale, so we stopped using it when it hit its limit. Perhaps the actual explanation is that we lost interest in this solution, so we stopped using it when we became tire of it. There are many occasions when a new system works when it is new. Everyone is […]
Tags: Expectations · Fatigue · Management · Problems · Scale · Solutions
The Great Transition (Chaos)
June 20th, 2022 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips A part of the Great Resignation and Great Embarrassment is the Great Transition. We are in this period of time now. We think we know the end state, but things sure are chaotic now with many unforeseen and unwanted events. We had the Great Resignation. That is still in progress. The pandemic […]
Tags: Change · Chaos · Expectations · Jobs · Remote Work
The Boy Who Cried Wolf and Other Tales of Adulthood in the 2020s
June 9th, 2022 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Please, choose words wisely so that actions will match the words. Yesterday, I was hit with a couple of examples of the Aesop’s fable. The trouble was, these were real life, and a boy wasn’t crying—it was adults jabbering nonsense. I won’t repeat the examples. There is something about these crying-wolf examples […]
Tags: Expectations · Fable · Honesty · Integrity · Management · Word