Working Up

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

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The Risk of Efficiency

July 13th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Often, greater efficiency means sharing resources that were previously not shared. When a shared resource breaks, everyone suffers. Twenty years ago I worked in a computing lab that suffered great improvements in efficiency. Yes, we improved and suffered at the same time. We began sharing resources. We had computers that were idle […]

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Tags: Change · Management · Risk

Commitement, Control, and Risk

July 14th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Simple yet oft-forgotten principles: commit to only what I can control. If I commit to things that are outside my control, I am assuming risk. I ran into the situation recently There are many times in my life when I am surprised to find people doing things that go against time-proven principles. […]

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Tags: Risk

They Made Us Do That in College

September 2nd, 2013 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are practices that time has proven to be worthwhile. Someone in school drilled them into us. We vowed to avoid them as soon as school was out, but life eventually catches us. I have lost track of the number of times I have seen this on the job. We have a […]

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Tags: Education · Excuses · Logic · People · Process · Risk

Effort and the Consequences of Failure

August 29th, 2013 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips How much oversight, process, testing, and any activity other than writing software should you do? The answer lies in the consequences of failure. Don’t let the quest for better destroy your software project. How much effort should you spend testing software? How much management oversight should software projects have? How much effort […]

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Tags: Management · Programming · Risk

Agile Development and Risk

August 22nd, 2013 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Agile development can reduce risk, but not every kind of risk. Agile development does reduce risk. Agile is a form of the spiral development created by Barry Boehm (okay, scream now). Spiral was created to reduce risk and, if used properly (loaded words), it does reduce risk. So, let’s consider Agile: Agile […]

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Tags: Agility · Management · Risk

Risk Managers

February 22nd, 2012 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The foundation of risk management is asking, “What could possibly go wrong?” Some people, however, shrug when asked while others make a list of a million things. A recent chat: Person A: What do you know about risk management? Me: A “risk” is a problem that hasn’t occurred yet. Person A: What […]

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Tags: Management · Risk

Accepting Less Than Perfect

November 17th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Self-driving cars are almost here. They are safer than human drivers. They aren’t perfect, but they are better. Nevertheless, we might repeat our past and not employ less-than-perfect computer systems. Maybe, however, our younger generations may accept it this time. Google has been working on self-driving cars. Others have as well. Those […]

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Tags: Risk · Systems · Technology

Familiar, Comfortable, and (Perhaps) Risk

October 5th, 2009 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The familiar is comfortable. The comfort, however, sometimes hides risk and impending doom. Take care. I have been on the road for two weeks walking mostly through rural Alabama. This weekend I am in Tuscaloosa. This is a university town, so it differs from most of the places I have been. I […]

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Tags: Change · Communication · Culture · Risk