Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Take care when confusing lab projects with real products. Both are good, but they are not the same. In all fields of endeavor, we have lab projects and real products. Both can be good. They, however, are not the same. Sometimes product managers and marketers confuse these at their peril. Students in […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips In our personal lives, we often take all the risk without asking others to share it. The basic, but rarely asked, question is, “What does each person have to lose?” I am sitting here sipping coffee pondering what to do. Someone is asking me to wait, and wait, and wait. Perhaps they […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Why do we wonder why middle managers don’t seem to do anything useful. That is the definition of “middle.” We disdain the “man in the middle.” He or she doesn’t seem to do anything but cause greater expense. We disdain the middle managers. They don’t do anything but add levels to the […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Yet another statement about what happens in meetings shows itself to be something to toss away. For some reason, meetings tend to have many statements that are supposed to be proven by time and such but are nothing but folly. I have written about some of these before such as “silence means […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips There are many aspects to working from home or at the office. One is simply the time wasted commuting. Folks are returning to the office after the pandemic. They are? Are they saying they are, but not really? One simple aspect of the question is commuting. I live in he Virginia suburbs […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Bad things happen in the lives of employees. Other employees are asked to show consideration. This works for a short while. Managers need to act properly and quickly. Many years ago, I went to a fellow employee to retrieve some information from an equipment inventory. It was a mess. The guy didn’t […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we simply have to lower expectations when it comes to what other people will do. Too bad. We can do better. It happened again the other day at work. I needed signatures on paper, or at least the digital equivalent of them. It was all set. Go to this building on […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips A partial list of boo boos I have seen in published documents over the years. If anyone had read these things, surely they would have found these things. Right? I guess an editor or someone like that should have read this, but it appears that no one did. Here is a partial […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes, the better way to do something isn’t as much fun. A few years ago, I wrote a book on software project management. I began the book with the words, “I like to write software.” I did and still do like to write software. I am simulating a machine that does wonderful […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips An apology is just that—an apology. It is neither an explanation nor a justification. Rats! An apology is simple: I did this wrong. I am sorry for that. I ask your forgiveness. An apology does not contain an explanation: I was trying to do such-and-such and … An apology does not contain […]

[Read more →]