Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips I cannot overestimate the importance of starting well. What a person does on the first project of their life is out of proportion in importance. This is quick and simple: The most important project in a person’s life is the first project. Why? Because the new person knows nothing about real-world projects. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A veto is where one person can say NO, and that over rules a multitude of YESs. Look around and notice the prevalence of the veto. I was in a fast food restaurant early on a recent Saturday morning (old people like me tend to do those things). Three teens were sitting […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In addition to the planner’s basics, talk directly to the right people in a frank manner. Years ago, I worked with a company VP who had success on the vast majority of his projects. His “secret” was: Plan your work (in detail) Work your plan (track progress in detail) Okay, big deal. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Every organization and endeavor is unique to a degree, but not absolutely unique. Learn the prior experience of each person and find a way to benefit from it. Like  many of my (hi)stories, this one is from yet another experience with morons in government. I had 20 years experience in the larger […]

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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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by Dwayne Phillips Policy statements can be the most useful things that managers can produce. They help persons make decisions daily. Yes, managers can, and sometimes do, contribute to work. One of the more useful contributions they make is policy. Let’s define terms: Policy statements articulate broad direction for an organization. For example, Write code […]

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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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by Dwayne Phillips Can you measure a manager’s good-ness by the weight of the people being managed? I contend that you can. First, a little story: I was eating lunch with Rob. Now that he had moved to a new job, he ate lunch in the cafeteria everyday. In his previous job, he rarely ate […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There is the thing we are attempting and the way we are attempting it. Using this perspective, there are four cases to consider. Wrong Thing – Wrong Way: Here we chose the wrong problem to solve and the wrong process to solve it. Aargh. We will work very hard with grievous vexation […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A  practice in government was labeling people. It was a lazy but oft-used practice. Happenstance was the main source of labels. I worked in government 28 years. Managers were often overwhelmed with things to do. Much of the “work” was self-created, but that is another story for another time. Anyways, one result […]

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