Working Up

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

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I Will Do Less Than I Can

October 24th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The title is the hallmark of a person in a bureaucracy. Do less; just get by. I have worked in and around government agencies for four decades or more. Gosh, that’s a lot. The title of this little post summarizes the mean of the bell curve in these places. Let’s expand a […]

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Tags: Commitment · Conversation · Excuses · Government · Leadership · Learning · Systems

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

Answer the Big Questions, Please

October 17th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips This is what the people who steer the money want from AI or anything else. We don’t want AI to do the dishes and the laundry. Well, most of us want these things, but the people who steer the money, i.e., the CEO folks, want answers to their big questions. Big questions […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Data Science · Decide · Questions · Requirements · 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

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

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

The Fireman Arsonist

April 1st, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We reward the fireman, the person who extinguishes a fire. Did the fireman, however, start the fire? I used to see this often. I worked in a place where engineers would plan projects and deliver systems per their plans. The trouble was: the engineers were terrible planners. They were good system designers […]

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Tags: Design · Engineering · Planning · Record · Systems · Work