Working Up

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

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Recruiting: Write-Only Memory

June 8th, 2017 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are no qualified applicants available! Jobs are left empty! Really? This links to yet another article where employers complain that there are no qualified applicants available. There are many reasons why jobs go unfilled while the qualified remain unemployed. This post is about one of the reasons: The recruiting departments of […]

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Tags: Jobs · Problems

Expanding the AI Problem Set

September 5th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips First you work on a small problem set. Once you learn from that, you expand the problem set. Google recently started hiring speakers with accents to help train its speech recognition software systems. Why didn’t they do this sooner? Why did they only use middle-America, white-bread Americans, or some other Johnny Carson, […]

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Tags: Adapting · General Systems Thinking · Learning · Problems · Process

Solution Collapse

May 5th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips If we work hard enough and smart enough to the solution, we often find the solution collapses to something small and simple. At the end of all the work, we find the solution. The solution is messy, but it is a solution. Then we go home. Then we come back to work […]

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Tags: Problems · Process · Systems

My Customer and Me, and Our Difficult Problems

April 28th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips When confronted with a difficult situation with a difficult customer, it is often better to step back and ask a few fundamental questions. The setting: I am a developer. I am building a system for a customer. The work is going poorly. We seem to make progress on some days, but most […]

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Tags: Problems · Reframe · Work

I Know How to Start the Windows Task Manager

August 13th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Knowing how to repair a system indicates something about its quality. I know how to start the MS Windows task manager. You press the Crtl-Alt-Del keys at the same time. A window pops and displays option. One option is the task manager. The task manager allows me to kill processes that are […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Management · Problems · Systems · Technical Debt

More Eyeballs

June 29th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The ever decreasing cost of technology enables more people to look at more of our problems. There is hope. Linus’ Law is disputed as to what it is and who said it and who published it and all those things that come with a quote that is often quoted and misquoted. I’ll […]

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Tags: People · Problems · Technology

Don’t Try so Hard

January 26th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I try hard at everything. Sometimes I try hard too much. <start advice> Slow down. Back away. Breathe. Drink a cup of coffee. Relax. Take a nap. Find your own little zen thing that helps you to not try so hard. <end advice>

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Tags: Breathe · Choose · Coffee · Health · Problems · Process · Thinking · Time

Too Close for Comfort

October 27th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips For many of us, being close shows us the details, and those details make us sick. I give to several non-profit organizations. One of them is based ten thousand miles away. Another is based five miles away. I see many details of the one that is five miles away. I don’t like […]

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Tags: Competence · Expectations · General Systems Thinking · Problems

Finish the “We Can’t” Statement

October 6th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We often state that we can’t do something. We rarely finish that statement with a reason. The reason usually leads to a solution. Several years ago I was working on a project where we were building a small gadget. The user was to take the gadget outdoors (backyard) and attach it to […]

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Tags: Communication · Design · Problems

The Number of Eyeballs Keeps Growing

June 19th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Science, and just about everything else, continues to advance with the number of eyeballs on every problem. Linus Torvalds is credited with saying: Given enough eyeballs, are bugs (problems) are shallow It is a simple concept: if many people are staring at a problem, at least one is likely to see the […]

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Tags: Problems · Technology