Working Up

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

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Fat Finger the Database (misadventures in data entry)

October 11th, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Data entry, one of the lower-paid professions, is prone to errors, and some can be fatal. During the aftermath of the recent Hurricane Ida, a person close to me needed an essential service. By “essential” I mean if the service did not arrive, someone would die. I repeatedly called the service provider. […]

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Tags: Competence · Customer · Error · General Systems Thinking · Learning · Mistakes · People · Testing

The Denial of Service Attack

August 30th, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips What we saw with gas stations is known as a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Flood a business with customers and the business fails. The scary part is that someone learned from the situation. Back in May of 2021 (boy, that seems like a long time ago), a pipeline was closed due […]

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Tags: Concepts · Customer · Failure · General Systems Thinking · Observation · People · Reaction

Build for Us, Hope They Might Use It

March 29th, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We usually build things for ourselves. We then hope that someone else will use what we build. Sometimes we adapt to doing it right; sometimes not. A recent story related how we want 80-somethings to register for and then receive the virus vaccine. “All you have to do” is go online and… […]

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Tags: Design · General Systems Thinking · People · Systems

The Common Person

January 25th, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Thoughts about all those folks out there who seem to be doing something that the experts don’t like. 1980—it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away when I heard a woman telling foreign dignitaries about the common person in America. I didn’t approach her and hit her with […]

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Tags: Appearances · Fairy Tales · Integrity · Observation · People · Respect

Learnering

November 23rd, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips After being asked the same question for years, perhaps I have found the answer to, “What is it that you do?” I have spoken to many job recruiters. I have spoken to many persons in job interviews. Some of these persons ask a variation of the question: What is it that you […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Learning · Management · People

No Parking, Fire Zone

August 9th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We each have threats that we value and threats that we ignore. I sit here in a coffee shop drinking plain old coffee while writing. In the year of the virus, persons walk in wearing their theatrical masks to show concern for a threat. They grab their coffee, walk out, and sit […]

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Tags: Change · Coffee · Differences · Health · People

Perspective Urgency

July 9th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips This is urgent. Is it? adjective: urgent (of a state or situation) requiring immediate action or attention. Immediate attention. Do it right now! That is a relative statement. Someone else tells me, “Do it before doing these other things on this list that someone has created. I deem this more important than […]

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Tags: Choose · People

Which Door Opens?

July 6th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we do things backwards and expect everyone else to know. Here in the year of the virus, I sit outside a nationally recognized chain of coffee shops (whose name begins with an “S”) viewing the Internet and occasionally writing blog posts….(is that a long-enough opening sentence?)… But anyways, in the year […]

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Tags: Humor · Observation · People

The Democratization of This or That Technology

June 29th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Someone please give me a magic wand so that I won’t have to talk to those ogres. I currently work in what some people call “data science” and others call “artificial intelligence and machine learning.” Each day I read something about the “democratization of data science” and the “democratization of artificial intelligence […]

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Tags: People · Technology · Tools

Did We Really Need those Conferences Anyway?

March 9th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The conferences are cancelled this year. Will we miss them? Really? I suppose that 2020 will be remembered as the year of the coronavirus. Right or wrong, and we may never know if we were right or wrong in all this, people stayed home. We hid from mass gatherings—I didn’t know that […]

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Tags: Conference · Economics · Meetings · People