Working Up

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

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Entries from October 2020

The Overseers

October 29th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips If work is important enough to be performed, the product is important enough to be inspected. Someone is supposed to do something. Okay. Do it. Next. Right? This is a note to project managers and those who may think we don’t need or maybe need project managers: You get what you inspect, […]

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Tags: Adults · Expectations · Management · Work

Any Excuse, Any Reason

October 26th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips When something does not hold up to rational analysis, any excuse or any reason is as good as another. And when no excuse or reason comes to mind now, we will think of something later. A recent xkcd cartoon had a wonderful punchline, “No, for another reason I’ll think of later.” The […]

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Tags: Excuses · Myth · Questions · Stories · Teaching

The Blank Sheet of Paper Test

October 22nd, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Everyone claims agreement. Great. Let’s just test that statement with a blank sheet of paper. “We all agree on what we are to do!” claimed a person full of hope and anxious to get to work. “Wow, great,” said a second person who likes to hear good news, but is skeptical when […]

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Tags: Agreement · Alternatives · Failure · Meetings · Process

…Unless You Have a Tool

October 19th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are many tasks that are difficult and require fine motor control and dexterity. They are darn near impossible—unless you have a tool. A few years ago, we were building a system that had a sensor. The sensor would sense the state of an other system and relay signals to a processor. […]

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Tags: Alternatives · General Systems Thinking · Systems · Tools

WDYWT?

October 15th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I find a little trick that helps me write something “for the record” each day. I write. I tell myself that every day. Most days that is true. Most days I will write something of some substance or “for the record.” I have worked from home for the past six months (almost […]

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Tags: Adapting · Remote Work · Systems · Tools · Visibility · Writing

Taking a Step Back

October 12th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips You have met with a group of smart persons. You all worked hard. You decided what to do. Now, do you do it or… You gathered with a group of smart persons and worked hard. Discussion, question, discussion, alternative, question, answer, do it all over again. Decision. How do you take a […]

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Tags: Decide · Review

The First Step

October 8th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The first step, if taken carefully, eliminates almost all other directions from consideration and frees the mind for everything else. I’ve read about trackers, i.e., those persons who are assigned to find someone who is lost. They find people lost in the woods. The most important thing the tracker does is to […]

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Tags: Clarity · Leadership · Management · Planning

The Dragon Slayer Award

October 5th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips In which we reward folks for solving problems, but we don’t ask about how the problem arrived or who created it. This is an old story told to me by a long-retired colleague. There was once this big contract that lasted several years. At the monthly review, the project manager for the […]

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Tags: Myth · Problems

The Authority Thermocline

October 1st, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips If I work directly for you, I will do as you say. If, however, your are three or four levels distant, meh. A number of years ago I wrote about the information thermocline. Bureaucracies tend to reduce the flow of information as it attempts to pass from the top to the bottom. […]

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Tags: Authentic · Communication · Management · Work