Jordan Phillips
Occasional dispatches from an American PM in Tokyo

Latest

Oct
26
The cover image for this post is a collage of various origami-style paper animals on a colorful background

"Justice for Animals" Book Reaction

Martha Nussbaum's "Justice for Animals" advances provocative conclusions through a compelling model of a just political order.
9 min read
Aug
28
A digital collage of a walking path in clouds, with angular shapes and visual artifacts that suggest a digital setting.

ProdFund 1.11: So What?

To wrap up the first season of the podcast, we're reviewing some big themes and then looking toward the future of software development.
16 min read
Aug
18
Open-office style desks off to the horizon, an open sky overhead as the sun sets in the distance.

ProdFund 1.10: Where We Work

While the modern tech office has evolved a long way from its predecessors in 1720s London, there's a surprising amount of continuity. Work from home in tech, meanwhile, traces back to two surprising origins in 1970s California.
19 min read
Jul
26
A modernist midcentury illustration of a giant Egyptian pyramid under construction by a modern construction crew.

ProdFund 1.9: Agile at Scale

Agile started as a "grassroots labor movement" for "organizational anarchists." By 2018, a third of its founders had disavowed their creation. What happened?
21 min read
Jul
12
Digital collage image of a scientist at a workbench with computer, lab equipment, and abstract shapes in the background

ProdFund 1.8: Quantified Leap

The idea that everything is a test, and software is driven by data, is a very recent notion. Indeed, rigorous experimentation is a pretty new idea in every context. Let's see how it became ubiquitous in modern software development.
27 min read
Jul
03
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ProdFund 1.7: The Startup Wave

Out of the ashes of the dot-com crash, a slowly revitalizing software industry extended Agile and Lean methodologies from how to make software to how to make companies, spawning to the creation of many of today's biggest tech giants.
26 min read
Jun
25
Faux infographic showing white and red mountains, overlaid with line chart overlays mimicking ski lifts.

ProdFund 1.6: Agile & Lean

In the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, the leaders of Scrum, XP, and other IID methodologies came together to create the Agile Manifesto, triggering practical and cultural changes across the software industry,
24 min read
Jun
15
Abstract Memphis style illustration representing goofy 1990s artistic style, with a desktop computer in the middle.

ProdFund 1.5: The Agile Precursors

Iterative & Incremental Development went through critical evolutions in the 1980's and 90's, spawning Scrum and Extreme Programming, and laying the ground for Agile.
19 min read
Jun
08
A pixel art image of heavy mainframe computers in a steep river valley, dominated by a large waterfall.

ProdFund 1.4: Waterfall Ascendant

Waterfall simultaneously thrived and struggled as the early commercial software industry wrestled with professionalization -- and then got locked in by government standards in the 1980's.
23 min read
Jun
01
1960s-style illustration of an office worker at a computer terminal, surrounded by abstract graphs and pie charts.

ProdFund 1.3: Management and Measurement

Methodology may determine how we build software, but the way companies manage their workers and measure their progress are essential in shaping what we build in the first place.
19 min read