Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips The May/June 2009 issue of IEEE Software has a paper by Greg Wilson on books that are “Not on the Shelves.” In it, Wilson gives the synopsis of 12 books that should be on the shelves, but are not. At least he can’t find them. Wilson asks for more suggestions of such […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A recent discussion with Johanna Rothman reminded me of terrible discussions I had with government project managers about project lifecycles. The shame is that most government managers don’t know one project lifecycle from another. Hence, when talking to them, ask enough questions to understand what they think they really mean. In general […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Being a grandfather has taught me a few things about managing work. How can a baby teach an adult so much in so little time? I am a grandfather; I have been one for 6 1/2 wonderful months. I see my grandson on average every three to seven days (funny how I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Government exists to spend money. The more money spent, the better it is for those inside government and also for their partners in industry. This is a disappointing system. There are solutions, but don’t look for them to be implemented anytime soon. I worked over 25 years in government and a few […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I learned something big and useful this week – really useful. After kicking myself for not knowing it already, I grew some humility. Learning comes from unexpected people, times, and places. I resolve to use what energy I have to pay attention for the next thing coming my way. I learned something […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are many methods to use to reach a conclusion. Since they all involve fallible people like me, most of the methods are fallible. Expect requests for further study. Anticipate them and ask others to study alongside you from the beginning. Arriving at a conclusion is a primary task of an engineer, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I did a lot of research on the Internet this week at work. I can’t mention the topics I researched, but I was researching for a good four days. It isn’t surprising to reveal that the information available on the net is astounding. Google is a great tool. The same is true […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Video on personal computers is messy. Some format play on some operating systems if you download the right video players. It should be simpler. I have been playing with video the past couple of weeks. It has not been fun, but it has been educational. I needed to do a demonstration of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are many forces in our culture that helps create workaholic people. Twitter joins the group. Twitter is cute, funny, silly, a waste of time, and many other things depending on who is telling you this or what you are doing at the time. Consider this one: Twitter is yet another means […]

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