Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Working software is more valuable than documentation—except when it isn’t. And we have Dwayne’s Declaration. Part of the Agile Manifesto states: We…value working software over comprehensive documentation Some of us are old enough to have known this years before the manifesto was manifest. Of course we wanted working software, except when we […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes I work in groups of persons; sometimes I work alone. Why don’t I have a workspace for each of these types of work? This is a silly request; I realize that. This request, however, reflects reality and it would certainly improve productivity. I want two work spaces for myself. One is […]

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by Dwayne Phillips These are my most recent and most favored proposal-writing tools. In the past few years I have spent some of my time writing proposals for companies seeking government contracts. There are a lot tools available to proposal writers and all other types of writers. Here are my most favored and most productive […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The heartlessness of the common job advertisement. If you issue such ads, please consider your audience—the unemployed. Join us! …reads the job listing title. The listing continues with… As we create wonderful wonderfulness in a wonderful workplace! GREAT! When do you want me to arrive? When do I receive my first paycheck? […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Take care with jokes at work. A “manager” may hear the joke, take it seriously, and make it a policy. This isn’t a Dilbert cartoon; it is a true story that happened to me some 20 years ago. I found a little book of performance appraisal phrases. I found it to be […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sorry, the title of this post is true. Several years ago, I managed a West Coast project from the East Coast. Every day I would send several faxes to the other coast to ask and answer questions. (I wrote that this was several years ago and faxes were the best means of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Yet another new occupation comes from yet another bad practice. For the past several years surveying the job market, I kept finding ads for a position called DevOps. Some reading and discussions sort of brought me to an understanding of what that is. Once again, I learned that I did this new […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Forget the old cliche about stupid questions. There ARE stupid questions, and hiring managers have asked me a bunch of them. I’ve been interviewed for jobs a dozen times There are stupid questions, and hiring managers ask them all the time. First, don’t ask the person to solve your problems. This is […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we are stuck with a bad customer. We still choose how we live and work. Alright, our customer is bad. They gripe all the time, show no appreciation for our efforts. They are, however, our customer and they pay our bills. So now what? We will: work everyday work smart have […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When confronted with a difficult situation with a difficult customer, it is often better to step back and ask a few fundamental questions. The setting: I am a developer. I am building a system for a customer. The work is going poorly. We seem to make progress on some days, but most […]

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