PM Book: CH 1: Project Management

Well this blog entry is going to prove beyond any doubt that I'm a nerd. In prep for my MBA, I have already decided to start reading some books on management (mainly from the website 77 Best Business Books). If you yawn or get bored during this entry, I don't blame you! But I've tried to lay down the meat of what I read here.

Scott Berkun is the author of this book "Making things Happen: Mastering Project Management". He was a successful, high profile manager at Microsoft for 9 years and this book is regarded as sort of a Bible for managers in technical settings. 

The preface and first chapter start out with general knowledge about project management, using historic examples such as pyramids, Boeing and the Parthenon. He shows how today's software projects could learn a few things from these stellar examples of engineering management. The main lessons here are to reuse past successes and to break down difficult problems into simple, but not necessarily easy, parts.

After focusing on projects, Scott moves toward their management. He lauds Microsoft a little bit here for being the first to 'create' the true PM who is more than just a business or technical role guy. In leading a team, the PM has to perform a balancing act between egos, ambiguity, complexity, and patience, all the time handling deadline pressure and distractions. Only the best managers can truly balance all these, but it IS possible. The best managers walk around, get involved in interacting with the team, suggest how to get things done and yet know to have a beginner's mind when a programmer explains something technical. They are the only ones who have a unique perspective on the project and can see things clearly from above to 'make good things happen.'

Scott makes a fascinating point for anyone who thinks their desk job is difficult. He asks them to walk into the kitchen of their favorite busy restaurant or the ER of a hospital. These are also projects with people working together toward a common goal, but with a much crazier timeline and with lives on the line (well you could die of hunger). 

In the preface and the first chapter, Scott comes off as a very intelligent, precise and to-the-point author. He claimed that anyone can gain from the book, whether business students, programmers or project managers (PMs). But after reading the first chapter, it's clear the book will benefit real PM's in big companies, as they can immediately apply the techniques they read here.