Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips A recent discussion with Johanna Rothman reminded me of terrible discussions I had with government project managers about project lifecycles. The shame is that most government managers don’t know one project lifecycle from another. Hence, when talking to them, ask enough questions to understand what they think they really mean. In general […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Being a grandfather has taught me a few things about managing work. How can a baby teach an adult so much in so little time? I am a grandfather; I have been one for 6 1/2 wonderful months. I see my grandson on average every three to seven days (funny how I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Government exists to spend money. The more money spent, the better it is for those inside government and also for their partners in industry. This is a disappointing system. There are solutions, but don’t look for them to be implemented anytime soon. I worked over 25 years in government and a few […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are many methods to use to reach a conclusion. Since they all involve fallible people like me, most of the methods are fallible. Expect requests for further study. Anticipate them and ask others to study alongside you from the beginning. Arriving at a conclusion is a primary task of an engineer, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Managers are everywhere. The vast majority of them perform their jobs poorly. Still, we work for these bad managers. Why? I am reading a manuscript written by Johanna Rothman on managing project portfolios. I expect this to be a fine book when published. It is for people who have more work than […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Most meetings are a waste of time and most meetings are conducted by educated, intelligent, and accomplished people. These contradictions fit when I realized that the people conducting the worthless meetings simply didn’t have the energy to make them worthwhile. I needed another tact besides sighing and suffering. I have sat in […]

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by Dwayne Phillips As a manager, I once believed that life could not occur without my presence. I killed myself to be at everything. I learned that was false. This was a blow to my ego that I was around people who were competent enough to work without me. The biggest college basketball game of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Small tasks should need small effort. Large tasks should need large effort. Those nuggets of management wisdom are often wrong. I find that task effort relates to task difficulty, and task difficulty relates to the experience of the people on hand. I recently helped some people remodel a person’s house. We did […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some system developments take a long time and drain people. You walk in to work and there is no energy. A demonstration of capability is one way to awaken people and bring focus to a project. Several years ago, I was working with about a hundred people on a large ($100 million) […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Bringing about change in a group of people is perhaps the most difficult task anyone can undertake. An old fable sheds light on one technique for encouraging change. I wish I knew the origin of this little fable. I hope that I relay it well enough. Anyways, here goes: Once upon a […]

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