Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We are now in the age of the device that allows us to see the pictures and hear the audio of the greater television system.

Years ago, I read a book in which the author referred to his television as a televisor. I don’t recall the book or the author – rats! I had to think about his use of the words for a while and concluded that he was correct.

Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome (black-and-white) or colored, with or without accompanying sound. – Wikipedia

Hence, “television” is the entire medium. Wikipedia then admits that some people call their home television set as “television.” Let’s not allow the masses to redefine language (or shall we?).

The televisor is the device that allows us to see the pictures and hear the audio of the greater television medium.

We have entered the age of the televisor. Tablets smartphones, and even old-fashioned home computers have become the televisor of choice for millions of us. Various satellite and cable TV providers are now offering services that allow us to watch television on our other devices.

These other devices are our televisors.

Welcome to a new age.

by Dwayne Phillips

I suffered from this malady much of my life. I had an idea, but I didn’t have permission to do it. When you meet people who are like I used to be, give them permission.

That is a really short blog post. Perhaps it should be a tweet or something else, but I write blog posts (I guess that shows how old I am or something).

I spend a lot of time talking to people who are between 18 and 23 years of age. I enjoy that. What I do more than anything else with these young adults is:

I give them permission.

I give them permission to:

• take a nap
• write a book
• photograph everything
• attend a trade school instead of a college
• like things instead of hating them
• and so on

Look around you. Listen to people. I predict that you will meet many people who want permission to do something that is good for them and good for others.

Give them permission.

by Dwayne Phillips

As writers, we have all the facts of the world at our fingertips. While writing, don’t stop the typing to find the correct term. Put a THINGY placeholder on the page and come back later.

Writing is easier than it used to be. Okay, anyone who tries to write can scream for a few moments and then resume reading. I will wait. Okay, time is up.

What I mean by that scream-creating statement is that facts are at our fingertips like at no other time in history. We can go online, Google machine or whatever you use, and there is the answer.

What do you call a utensil that you use to serve soup? Google “utensil to serve soup” and I learn it is a “ladle.” (I also learn how to spell it.)

When did Ford first make the Mustang? 1964.

What do you call a seed for a peach? A pit.

What do you call it when you roll around bread dough? Knead.

And we could go on forever (and never write anything – and that is a temptation to avoid).

We don’t have to make up words or write the wrong thing like, “he rolled bread dough” instead of “he kneaded the dough.” We have the right information.

The temptation is to stop writing and look up information. DON’T DO THAT!

Instead, while drafting, keep the fingers moving and the words appearing on the screen. Put a placeholder on the screen; come back to it later.

One way is to type, “He blah blah blah the dough.”

Another way is to type, “He THINGY the dough” or “He had an original THINGY Ford Mustang in his garage” or “He dropped the THINGY PEACH SEED in the hole.”

“THINGY” is easy to find by searching a draft of writing. It is also easy to spot on the paper. Come back later and replace all the THINGY occurrences with the correct word(s) provided by the Internet searching THINGY.

by Dwayne Phillips

I rant about the misuse of the word “transparent.”

Pardon me while I smash my head in a doorway (painful). I am tired of transparency. I am tired of hearing,

Our process is transparent

We emphasize transparency in all we do

Here is a definition of transparent: Allowing light to pass through so that objects behind can be distinctly seen.

I don’t want to see what is hanging on the wall behind our work. I want to see our work. That is called “visible.” I want visible work, not transparent work.

by Dwayne Phillips

If you use tools at work, and who doesn’t, have tool experts around.

I am a big believer in having specialists working on a project – people who know one thing well. Yes, there is a place for other people, but most projects I have experienced have all generalists and no specialists.

The one area I want to see specialists is tools.

If you use MS Word on your project, have an MS Word expert around.

What? Everyone knows how to use MS Word. That is true, but few people know how to do fill-in-the-blank-with-some-obscure-function in MS Word. I had the pleasure to work on several proposals where we had an MS Word expert on the team. She would hold down the function-control-F## key and viola – things happened. She saved hundreds of man hours with her expertise.

I also worked on a project where an expert in MS Project (a scheduling program) arrived and saved the project tens of millions of dollars. The project was organized around half-a-dozen teams. Each team had a leader, and each leader created a schedule for their team.

In theory, the half-a-dozen schedules connected to create a master project schedule. Theory didn’t work. The project was a mess.

The MS Project expert walked in, spent a full day with each team leader, and viola (there’s that magic word again) – the master schedule worked.

No one really understood what the expert did. Everyone understood the result of what the expert did. The project didn’t correct itself, but the people on the project could understand what was wrong and what had to be done.

Spend the money to hire tool experts. They will pay their own salaries in savings.

by Dwayne Phillips

I explain how any government delay leads to wasted taxpayer money.

No connection between the two items? Let’s walk through this.

Company A contracts with the government. Which government doesn’t matter – national, state, local – as they all exist on taxpayers’ money. Company A has these smart, dedicated employees who work on government contracts.

When they don’t have a contract, these employees sit around watching the grass grow.

They charge their salaries to what most companies call “overhead.” These overhead charges add to the bills that Company A must pay. Company A pays them with their “overhead rate” on government contracts.

Say Company A pays John Smith $50 an hour. Company A charges the government $110 an hour for John Smith. The difference is the overhead rate (that is a simplification, but the concept is true).

If Company A has to pay John Smith to watch the grass grow, that raises their overhead rate. Instead of charging the government $110 an hour, they charge the government $130 an hour. Their overhead rate went up.

How does the government reduce the overhead rate? By issuing contracts on time. How does the government raise the overhead rate? By delaying the issuing of contracts.

Hence, to pay John Smith closer to his actual salary, the government needs to be efficient and quick. Hmm, when was the last time any of us saw that?

Many years ago, someone described this situation to me. My reaction was quick and simple:

If John Smith has nothing to do – fire him. Hire him back when you have a contract.

That doesn’t work either. Due to government regulation, hiring a person costs a lot of money – more money than paying them to watch the grass grow.

by Dwayne Phillips

I attempt to get a million dollars by inventing a new three-letter acronym about project management.

TQM, Agile, Heavy – all nice words used to describe different types of project management. So, here goes, my three-letter acronym that summarizes my recommendation for project management:

TPM

That stands for Thoughtful Project Management.

What does this mean? (Now I get myself into trouble.) One word:

think

There, not much to it, is there? Before you start, think. Consider who will be doing what, and tailor your project to that.

For example, I have managed projects where I sat down with a few people on day one, told them what we wanted, and showed up again six months later to collect the product. The people knew the product, how to build it, and didn’t need any supervision. I have managed projects where I met twice a day with the team. They were attempting something new to them. The risk was high, the big lessons popped up every hour, and we were scrambling constantly.

Well, that’s it – TPM. Book publishers and conference chairs line up and start calling me for my speaking and writing

by Dwayne Phillips

The English language has generated to where any word can mean almost anything. I have to ask.

We are going to emphasize X. My first reaction is, “what do you mean when you say X?”

X can be just about anything:

• small
• large
• speed
• quality
• size

Yes, short, one-syllable words have been redefined by everyone. I am no longer surprised by the definitions I receive.

Me: What do you mean by “speed”

Them: Well, by ‘speed’ I mean the size of the package that is delivered.

Me: What?

Them: You know, large packages take more time to throw away.

Me: Huh?

Them: What’s the matter, you stupid or something?

And so it goes. Always ask. I think this has something to do with that saying:

Seek to understand before trying to be understood.

“What’t

by Dwayne Phillips

Let’s return to basics and discuss the aspects of a plan.

I love it when a plan comes together – that guy on the A-Team TV show

This is one of those blog posts that I am embarrassed to write. Surely everyone already knows this one, right? Wrong.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say,

We need a fill-in-the-blank plan

Sigh. The person saying that rarely understands the concept of a plan, especially a written plan. So, let’s back up and review something that greatly simplifies writing a plan.

A plan answers a simple, three-word question:

whatcha gonna do?

Yogi Berra didn’t say that; I did. And that is all a plan does. It answers that question. A plane states:

Who will do What, When, Where, Why, How, and How much. Hmm, I’ve heard those words before somewhere.

But anyways, that is all there is to it. A plan states what you will (attempt to) do in the future. These little thoughts apply to:

• Project Plan
• Communications Plan
• Resource Management Plan
• Systems Engineering Plan

and so on.

A plan is not a treatise on a topic, especially a well-understood and often covered by a thousand writers of a thousand treatises already written on the topic.

There, I wrote the words. Simple? Yes. Easy? No. In fact, this must be one of the more difficult things to do in the sphere of human endeavor as I rarely meet anyone who understands this.

by Dwayne Phillips

Recent backlash against Google Glass is the first round in the war against the sensors. Is the first round, however, too late? The war has already been lost.

Google Glass has not reached the public, but it has already been banned from here and there. The Glass wearer has a a video camera turned on that records everything. Some people in some places don’t want to be recorded. It is almost fashionable for tech-trendy locations to ban the latest tech. Weird, huh?

“Drones” (remote controlled flying vehicles) are becoming smaller, more powerful, and less expensive. I can spend $200 and float one above my neighbor’s house to see what he is doing behind his 8-foot “privacy” fence.

Let’s go back a few years in technology. I take a photo at a Las Vegas tech convention. The photo appears on Facebook with date, time, and location. Face recognition puts the person’s name out to the world as well. Someone’s wife comments, “I thought you were going to Stockton for the weekend to work.”

Okay, so Google Glass is gaining more attention than the incremental changes that led to someone being embarrassed in Las Vegas. We ban Glass to make a statement. The war, however, is already over.

The sensors won.

Everyone is a sensor

That was a phrase that ran around a little a few years ago. It is a simple concept. My cell phone (smartphone, excuse me as I still call them cell phones) knows where I am, which direction I am facing, the time, temperature, motion, and so on. It knows what and who are in the imager.

My smartphone is full of sensors, and government agencies didn’t spend a penny to purchase, deploy, and maintain those sensors. And there are several hundred million sensor packages running around in the U.S. I guess there are several billion sensor packages running around all over the world.

So?

So government agencies can access all that sensor data. Who cares if your wife is upset for a few days. The IRS knows that your are earning money that you don’t report on your 1040.

The cool Glass bans don’t count. The war against the sensors is over. The data gatherers have already won.