Working Up

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

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Please Don’t Take Away My Excuses – part 1 I’ll Lose Choices

March 6th, 2017 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Excuses are great. One of the best is “I have so much to do” as it gives me choice as to what I will do today. I have ten jobs I do. If I don’t want to do #3 today, I have an excuse as I am really busy with the other […]

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Tags: Excuses · Expectations · Work

The History-Story Gap

July 14th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There is often a gap between our history and our story about our history. I suppose, since most of us are not famous, that is okay. We have experiences—those comprise our history. Then we tell people a story about those experiences. Sometimes the stories enhance the histories. Barack Obama has some doozies. […]

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Tags: Communication · Excuses · Fable · Family · Security · Teaching

Fun

April 14th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Never by surprised at what some persons consider to be “fun.” Consider this when managing risk. Recently, Microsoft put an Artificial Intelligence system called Tay on Twitter or something to learn how to chat. Some persons found it and taught it how to chat like a jerk. Microsoft wasn’t prepared for that […]

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Tags: Excuses · Fun · People · Risk

The Paramedics Rule

January 18th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Don’t do anything that you can’t explain to the paramedics. I learned this rule at a workshop held by author and consultant Jerry Weinberg. We were learning how to do simulations or exercises in seminars. You didn’t want to do anything that would accidentally break any bones or cause other things that […]

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Tags: Choose · Excuses · General Systems Thinking

Apologies

December 10th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We never have time to to it right, but we always have time to do it again. The summary above is an old cliche or common sense or something. The trouble with common sense is that it is usually common sense and rarely common practice. (Is that another cliche?) Gosh. How many […]

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Tags: Communication · Competence · Excuses

If You Want People to Take You Seriously

November 19th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Why aren’t people taking me seriously? Why aren’t people paying attention to me? If I want people to take and my group seriously, I should: do CMMI do PMP do ITIL sit at the keyboard and write everyday sit at the table and draw everyday take photos everyday play my instrument everyday […]

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Tags: Adults · Change · Excuses · Expectations · People

I Love My Unsolvable Problems

September 17th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We tend to love to live with our own problems. I read recently of a great innovation in fonts for programmers. Someone has just invented a new font that makes it easy to tell the difference between the number one and the lowercase letter L. Wow! 2015 and we’ve finally solved the […]

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Tags: Adapting · Excuses

Nothing In, Nothing Out

July 16th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips A curious cousin to Garbage In, Garbage Out is the database curse of Nothing In, Nothing Out. If you are old enough, you have heard of Garbage In, Garbage Out. When we put bad data into a computer, the computer crunches the numbers a produces more bad data. In recent years, I […]

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Tags: Excuses · Fear

Efficiency from Laziness

March 5th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Some of today’s more efficient technologies are efficient because we are lazy. FORTRAN is an efficient programming language. The executable files are small. The programs execute quickly. There is a simple reasons why FORTRAN is an efficient programming language: the compilers were created at a time when computing resources were much less […]

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Tags: Choose · Computing · Excuses

They Made Us Do That in College

September 2nd, 2013 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are practices that time has proven to be worthwhile. Someone in school drilled them into us. We vowed to avoid them as soon as school was out, but life eventually catches us. I have lost track of the number of times I have seen this on the job. We have a […]

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Tags: Education · Excuses · Logic · People · Process · Risk