Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Project managers have various goals. Here is one to consider: the people who work on your project are willing to work on another one. Working on a project can be tough. The requirements change, if there are any requirements. The schedule shrinks, if there is a schedule. Weekends – what are weekends? […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I hate doing something twice. That leads to disliking short tasks. Short tasks are easy to do all over a second time, especially when someone else decides that they want you to do it again. This may not sound right, but I would much rather have a long, time-consuming task that one […]

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by Dwayne Phillips People make mistakes. Some mistakes lead to a complete collapse of groups of people. When large, well connected groups fail, others suffer. This happens in national and international economies. It also happens on projects involving only a few persons. There are things that project managers can do to contain the damage from […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When faced with a situation on a system-building project, we can find an approach that will work. We can also find many other approaches. Do we choose the better approach or one we personally like? Several years ago, a professional soccer player spent a few afternoons helping to coach one of my […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We use process on projects. Aargh, process can be irritating and it can be precious. We are still snowed in here in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. The main roads are clear now, but six to eight inches of snow remain in my yard. Most of us here are sick […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Building systems, managing efforts, raising kids – these and many other worthwhile endeavors can be difficult. I see no good in attempting to make those things sounds easier than they are. The reframe discussed here changes the description of tasks to be attempted. We will just… I don’t know how many times […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are problems and there are methods of solving them. Given these two items, there are four cases that can define projects. Let’s consider the cases and how to avoid the more painful ones. In some of my books I have written about projects that went astray, i.e. they were disasters with […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Estimating budgets months and years into the future is difficult. I have yet to meet anyone who does it well enough to risk large amounts of anything valuable. The Excel spreadsheet calculates well enough, but it can provide a false sense of precision. Instead, I use a slide rule. The difficulty of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It is possible to predict the future on projects. It is also possible to change the future on projects. Knowing this second property and how to state it can make a big difference to project stakeholders. It is possible to predict the future. Given a system-building project that has been planned properly, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If you are a leader or manager, the people who work with and for you are watching and listening. Bob Sutton recently had a blog post with the theme being, leaders get the behavior they model and tolerate Most leaders and managers understand this little concept. Most manageres even agree with this […]

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