Working Up

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

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Adventures in Medicare and Other Systems Thinking Principles

October 21st, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips It is only healthcare and security in old age. Not very important, huh? In the recent past, I joined Medicare (yes, I am that old). Let’s see, just go to a government website, fill in the blanks, and viola’. Well, being a technically savvy person, I did that, or tried that. All […]

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Tags: Design · Error · General Systems Thinking · Government · Management · People · Systems

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 Most Important Processor Ever

August 26th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The most important computer processor ever made was the Intel 8087 (well, a little exaggeration). Spend more money on hardware or more money on smarts? The decision is still with us. It was 1980. Intel had just released the 8086 CPU—a computer on a chip that worked on 16 bits at a […]

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Tags: Computing · General Systems Thinking · Problems · Solutions · Technology · Thinking

The Yellow Dog Test

August 1st, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips An old political phrase can be applied to just about any endeavor as a test of how awful bad something is. Once again, we are in the time every four years in America when we have the seemingly endless campaign for President of the United States. This year, more than in the […]

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Tags: Communication · Fear · General Systems Thinking

Let the Marketplace Decide

July 22nd, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Let’s stop hyperventilating about this and that AI thing. The marketplace will decide and with more wisdom than myself. I just read yet another article about yet another artificial super-duper large language model. How can a model of something be larger than the something? Isn’t a model a smaller representation of something? […]

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Tags: Choose · Decide · Design · Error · General Systems Thinking · Systems

The Upside Down Expertise Pyramid

July 18th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We often have the experts looking up at someone atop the pyramid who simply doesn’t know much of what they are saying. There is supposed to be an expertise pyramid. The lone person atop the pyramid has more expertise than all those below. That is how the person reached the top of […]

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Tags: Baseline · Culture · Expertise · General Systems Thinking · Government · Systems

Learning to Solve Problems

July 15th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Show it, break it, fix it, make it better. My two older grandchildren were at my house recently. They are both teenagers now. The older was showing the younger a game that the older programmed. The younger tried an example that broke the game. Angst, frustration, embarrassment, etc. Then the older set […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Improvement · Problems · Solutions · Systems

Happy Birthday, America

July 4th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Once again, America is still here. I guess the Peter Principle explains our situation as the founders seemed to understand that. Once again we come to the anniversary of the founding of this grand experiment we call America. This is an election year, and those of who who can still think have […]

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Tags: America · General Systems Thinking

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

Over Organized

June 20th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes I find projects that are over organized. There is a good long-term reason for such. It still is a pain for the rest of us. I recently started working on a project that was over organized. The computer files were arranged by this criteria and that criteria and the other criteria. […]

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Tags: Adapting · Appearances · Clarity · General Systems Thinking · Management · Systems