Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Small projects are great for new engineers. The new engineers learn so many different aspects of building a system on a small project. I used to think that; I no longer do. Instead, I think that small or smaller projects carry with them a curse that can ruin an engineer or programmer […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I  obtain the PMI’s Project Management Professional certification. It seemed that every request for proposal that we received from the government wanted the same thing: a certified project manager.  It didn’t matter that a person, like me, had years of experience, three degrees, and had written several books on project management (like […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Avoid asking an engineer or some other non-writer to write a complete first draft of a document. The result will be bad, but the non-writer will love it more than himself. There are few anguishes known to man as that experienced when a manager tells an engineer or some other professional who […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It seems that the most difficult thing for a decision maker to say is “no.” Here are a few stories of efforts that were wasted because when given the opportunity, people could not bring themselves to say “no.” There is something difficult about saying “no.” I don’t quite understand it. Perhaps my […]

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by Dwayne Phillips. There are a lot of standards today guiding our behavior. There seem to be a lot of people today who ignore the standards and yet they succeed. It is illegal in many places to talk on a cell phone while driving. It is illegal in many places to send text messages while […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some 25 years ago, I learned something that has stayed with me. The reason it has stayed with me is that it still holds true: Don’t depend on live demos. The title of this post is a statement made often by one of my advisors in graduate school way back at LSU […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some meetings are driven only by the calendar. We meet monthly or weekly or whatever just because a page falls from the calendar on the wall. I’m going to a meeting tomorrow (or maybe its the day after?). The reason for the meeting? the calendar Yes, it is a meeting determined by […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An old lesson holds true today: getting the tools and people to the job site is half the job. Twenty-five years ago, I was involved in a fence-building project. Members of the community gathered to start from scratch and erect a 50-meter-long fence. I was one of the first people there and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The MOI Model has one more part – the jiggle. Use it to restart the group when you hit the flat or descending part of the MOI curves. The MOI Model has three parts – motivation, organization, and information. Recent posts have discussed how more of these helps until we reach a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In my industry job, I see people making phone calls to obtain answers to questions right now. I never say that in 28 years of government. Here are some thoughts on the practice. I worked in government for 28 years. I have since worked in private industry for two years. A current […]

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