Working Up

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

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Entries Tagged as 'Work'

Work a Little, Learn a Little

August 3rd, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips If we work a little, learn a little, and repeat, we can do some pretty impressive things. We don’t, however, like to do this “little” thing. Let’s work a little, talk about what we did, learn a little, and try again. That reduces the misunderstandings. That keeps us from wasting resources by […]

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Tags: Agility · Humility · Learning · People · Work

AI Won’t Replace People

June 22nd, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we attribute things we don’t like to things we don’t like. It’s easier that way, even though it isn’t reality. Well, here we have it: AI is replacing people. We can read it in the newspaper. Plain and simple. I link to one newspaper article. I could link to a dozen […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Communication · Jobs · Management · People · Problems · Work

Abbreviations

June 19th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips This is another fundamental of written communications that we seem to have forgotten—the humble abbreviation. Let’s abbreviate: The last item in the list is confusing, but given the context we always know what that means, right? Sorry, we don’t. I contend that we should not use abbreviations any longer. 98.6% of the […]

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Tags: Brevity · Clarity · Tools · Work · Writing

A Basic: Document Control

May 15th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips This is a basic practice. It is unfortunate that many have either forgotten or never knew this practice concerning documents. I find a document on the disk drive farm or network or whatever it is we call these things today. There are a jillion files out there, but I find the document […]

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Tags: Change · Chaos · Management · Work

The Stupid Hunters (still hunting down stupid everywhere)

May 8th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Aha! I was sort of right. Now companies have teams of folks hunting down stupid in their systems to keep the world safe from stupid. Way back in 2015, I wrote a blog post about being a stupid hunter. This is not a hunter who is stupid, but a hunter whose job […]

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Tags: Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Competence · Stupid · Systems · Technology · Testing · Visibility · Work

Leading and Managing

April 27th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Someone is paid to lead the people and manage the work. They are paid to answer, “Yes, but how are they going to do that?” Work can be difficult to accomplish at times. And there are times when you say, “This isn’t good enough. It must be better.” A well-meaning person replies, […]

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Tags: Conversation · Leadership · Management · Work

Things I Don’t Want to Know

April 24th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are things I don’t want to know. Knowing those things means I have to do some work that I just don’t want to do. Life is full of headaches. There are more than enough headaches for each day. I don’t need any more headaches. Then some well-meaning person walks in the […]

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Tags: Health · Learning · Management · Multitasking · Resources · Work

Why People Hate IT at Work

April 17th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The systems we use at work are woefully behind what we use at home. This is especially true if we work in a government organization. At the time I wrote this post, OpenAI demonstrated their GPT-4 with ChatGPT. That means I see how to summarize lots of things and understand what is […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Information · Technical Debt · Technology · Work

Culture and Size

March 30th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips A simple equation provides some insight into how culture must change with the number of people in the group. Years ago, the late author and consultant Jerry Weinberg told me of a little equation he used to note the shifts in culture in groups of people. The equation is 3N. If that […]

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Tags: Adults · Culture · Meetings · Work

Do and Claim, in That Order

March 6th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are many endeavors in which it is important to do something before talking about doing it. Have an idea for a book? Great. Don’t pitch the idea to publishers. They will expect you to come back with 90% of the book in hand. Then they will talk to you about you […]

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Tags: Concepts · Ideas · Intellectual Property · Resources · Stories · Tools · Work