Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

When writing about technical subjects, use the correct nouns and verbs as synonyms don’t work.

In various forms of writing about technical subjects, synonyms don’t work. For example, when describing electric current, flow—as in the flow of electrons or current—can’t be replaced by drift or glide, which are otherwise perfectly good synonyms for flow.

There are many other examples to cite, but not necessary here. What is necessary, is that when discussing topics with practitioners,

Learn the correct nouns and verbs and learn when synonyms won’t work.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is fundamental project manager advice. Avoid at your peril.

I’ve managed a lot of technical projects. These projects employed engineers, programmers, scientists, administrators, and so on. One thing I’ve learned is:

People tend to keep their work to themselves.

Hmm. So how is the working progressing? These people won’t come to me and tell me. Now what do I do? I recommend the title of the post. Go to every person on the project and ask them:

• How are you as a person today?
• What are you scheduled to be doing today?
• What are you doing today?
• If the two don’t match, what is happening for you?

The advice holds for every person on the project. Yes, that person as well—the one who gives me the creeps when I approach them, the one who is difficult to work with, the one who just doesn’t fit in, the one who will kill the project if they don’t do their work.

This advice does not mean spy on persons. This advice does not mean interfere with persons who are working. It means talk to them, every one of them, every day.

by Dwayne Phillips

I repeat an old, old story. Does it illustrate the power of collaboration or is it just another old, silly story that we tell children to have them behave?

The old story…

There was a farmer who grew excellent quality corn. Every year he won the award for the best grown corn. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors. “How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?” the reporter asked.

“Why sir,” said the farmer, “Didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.”

So is with our lives… Those who want to live meaningfully and well must help enrich the lives of others, for the value of a life is measured by the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy must help others find happiness, for the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all…

• Call it power of collectivity…
• Call it a principle of success…
• Call it a law of life.

The fact is, none of us truly wins, until we all win!!

by Dwayne Phillips

If a system designed to last a few months last 12 years, is that a success or a failure?

A recent story hailed the success of the NASA Mars rover. The rover was “designed” to last a few months, but is still going after 12 years. Wow! What a great design and implementation!

There is, however, another perspective on this, especially since it was built with the money of tax payers.

The system was required to operate a few months. Someone spent too much time, money, and expertise on the rover. They designed and built it to last 12 years—that is why it has lasted 12 years. That was a waste of money. The rover could have been designed and built much faster at much less cost.

Yes, there are advantages to having the rover function for 12 years. We, however, paid for those advantages. The persons who set the initial requirements didn’t want those advantages.

Oh, by the way, since the rover has continued to function and send data back for 12 years, we—the taxpayers—are paying the salaries of all those people who are receiving and analyzing the data. Perhaps this whole episode is a conspiracy of the data analysts who wanted paying jobs that lasted 12 years instead of a couple of months.

So, is this a design success or failure?

by Dwayne Phillips

Ignorance is often bliss. Ignorance of culture has kept me from trouble many times in my life. I guess this is an advantage of being a nerd.

I remember as a kid other kids walking up to me and, with their most earnest face, saying,

I dare ya’

They were really serious when they said this. They would look side to side to ensure no adults could hear them, purse their expression, and give me the “dare” statement. My reaction was always the same. I had no clue what they meant or why they were so serious. So, I ignored them.

Somewhere in my upbringing, my parents had neglected to teach me the importance of a dare. I was completely ignorant of it and I never got into trouble doing something wrong because of a dare.

That is the first example I can remember of being culturally ignorant. There were others that came to me while a child and there have been many others that hit me as a adult. People, like the “dare ya'” kid, would seem so earnest and tell me something that I just didn’t understand. Then they would pause and stare at me like I was supposed to do something earth shattering. Instead, I responded with a blank stare until the other person shook their head and walked away muttering something that I won’t repeat here.

There are great advantages to being culturally ignorant. In my life, being ignorant kept me from doing many stupid things. I avoided many problems because I simply didn’t understand what was bringing people to the point of a physical and emotional fit.

I guess this is an advantage of being a nerd or whatever term people use to describe us dolts these days.

by Dwayne Phillips

It can be most helpful to many if you would write what you do to accomplish your job.

How do you do your job?

Can you answer that question? Most people I have met cannot. I find that quite frustrating. Part of my job is to describe to possible customers how my colleagues do their jobs. We want possible customers to become real, paying customers, but those pesky possible customers want to be convinced that we know what we are doing. Hence, they want a description of how we do our job.

There are other possible benefits to describing, on paper, how you do your job. One is that other persons can look at your description. They can offer suggestions. Now we reach the point where we discuss ego—caution folks. Yes, I can do my job better than I do it now. “Better” is of course subjective, so I have to proceed with caution. It may be that I don’t want to improve in the way you want me to improve. If, however, I don’t at least listen I will never know.

Think—I know, another dangerous suggestion. How do you do your job? Start with a few scribbles and build it to an actual half a page or so. Put it away for a week. Look at it again.

This is not a request for analysis paralysis. Use your information to your benefit.

by Dwayne Phillips

One of the worst things to do in many situations is to try really, really hard.

One of the best pieces of advice I received from author and consultant Jerry Weinberg is:

Don’t try so hard

I have to force myself to remember this when I find myself staring at something and not seeing anything.

A friend of mine expresses this thought as:

Let’s not over think this

Another way I state this is:

Breathe

Enough pithy sayings. I try to back away from the details and consider what I am trying to do. There is something in front of me. What is the first and obvious thing I notice? Go with that.

Trying too hard constricts the flow of goodness to the brain and the heart. Relax folks. If there is something in front of you, you will see it. If nothing is there, you aren’t missing anything.

by Dwayne Phillips

I wish I knew what they meant, but, unfortunately, they used a cliche.

Oh, what a cute cliche.

I wonder what the writer actually meant.

I’ll never know because the writer used that cliche instead of words with meaning.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes the best use of time is wasting it and the most wasteful use of time is working hard.

Here is a story I heard many years ago:

Story

Two computer programmers came to work. They both worked hard and programmed for six straight hours to the point of exhaustion.

The first programmer, being exhausted, wasted the rest of the day, the next two hours.

The second programmer, being more punctilious than the first, continued to write computer programs for the next two hours.

Being exhausted, the second programmer made a lot of mistakes during these last two hours. There were so many mistakes that it took the rest of the week, four days, for the second programmer to find and correct all the mistakes.

The first programmer spent the rest of the week writing new, mistake-free computer programs.

Conclusions about the Story

1. Sometimes, the best thing to do at work is to waste time.
2. Sometimes, working really hard leads to mistakes that waste time to find and correct.

Real Life

This story came to mind this week as a colleague felt ill, but worked really hard anyways an made lots of mistakes that took days to find and correct.

I suppose these little stories we hear have some truth to them.

by Dwayne Phillips

Given a choice made for us or us making our own choice, we choose the default.

A recent experiment showed that people will eat fruit instead of french fries if fruit is the default choice. This experiment was not done on sophisticated, health-conscious adults but on kids. Uh, well, there must be an explanation.

Here are some possible explanations:

• we are lazy
• we trust those who set the default
• proximity overrules other things (including judgement)

Let’s skip over the first two as I don’t want to believe those about myself. Let’s agree the third explanation is most correct. So now what do I do?

Put the alternative I want people to choose right in front of them.

Boy, it is a bit embarrassing to need an expensive study to learn such a simple lesson.