Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips “You get what you inspect, not what you expect” (source forgotten, lesson relearned painfully too often) Relearning can be painful. At least “learning” is in there somewhere, and I believe that learning is a fruitful use of time. Here’s a recent conversation: Manager: I can’t believe how bad the quality of work […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The later in a project you correct a mistake, the more it costs. Confirmed again. There are many wise sayings associated with managing and working  projects. Many of the wise sayings are myths that have been busted. Many, however, are true, and we stubbornly refuse to believe them. Our stubbornness is evidenced […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Change in people (and what other type of change is interesting enough to consider?) takes time. Plan for it. Change takes time as people just don’t change quickly. Sometimes in an emergency we change quickly, but who wants to face an emergency? Here is a true story. I was working on the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Giving employees free time may bring great new ideas and products. Not giving employees free time may cause them to “try things” while working on projects. The projects often suffer. I have met many engineers, programmers, administrators, and others who have great imagination. Ideas come to them (I used to be one […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Project managers often use major changes to “get well.” They use the confusion of a major change to cover over lots of problems. Projects change. That appears to be a fact of life. Every now and then, a major change occurs. Examples include, Two large organizations merge A large organization splits into […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Several years ago I was working with a troubled project. We had a few days to plan and learn. Here are 14 lessons I learned. Several years ago,  I spent three full days with a group of people trying to plan their way on a project that was failing. They were doing […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If you manage software development, here is a tip for success: write less software. The above tip for success doesn’t make much sense at first, but humor me by reading the following story (a true story). Once I worked in government, and we hired a company to write software for us. The […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Do people associate your appearance with bad tidings? There is another way. Let’s oversimplify and divide the world of bosses into two categories: 1. those bosses who only visit when something is wrong and 2. those bosses who visit everyday to chat about the weather I have worked for both and prefer […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Longevity almost always wins over positions of authority. A conversation: Person A: You must do what I say because I am a VP or deputy under assistant director of something or other. Person B: Really? Person A: Yes. Person B: Let’s see, I have 15 years to retirement and the average above […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One measure of project stress is the means to which you go to hide from people so that they cannot bring you bad news. I used to hide in the men’s room. Actually, I had to go into a stall, close the door, and sit on the toilet in the men’s room. […]

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