Working Up to Project Management: How Crushing Rocks at the Asphalt Plant Prepared Me for Government Work

Description

Lessons Learned on the Road from Plant to Pentagon

    To do a job well, you need the right tools for the job, as any skilled tradesperson will tell you.

    Project managers, however, do not have a standard set of tools. In fact, sometimes they have to make their own.

    In Working Up! Dwayne Phillips describes the tools and techniques he first encountered as a laborer at an asphalt plant, working summers during college. These lessons guided him as he went on to a successful career as a systems developer, IT manager, consultant, and author.

    From a unique synthesis of two work environments -- an asphalt plant and a white-collar office building -- Phillips helps managers develop tools from their environments and construct a management approach that works.

    Topics include:

        * matching tools to environments

        * learning through experience

        * working with and through people

        * chance -- and risk -- at work

        * and much more