I’m reading a book on project management called “Making Things Happen”, by Scott Berkun. It’s a great book. One of the things I like about it is that it shows the universality of good project management principles. Of course, software engineers can find value in the book, and that was my initial purpose in picking it up at my local bookstore. However, as I read, I got one of those “aha” moments when you realize something you already knew, but hadn’t thought about in quite that way before.
When I speak of the universality of project management, I’m speaking muuuuch more broadly than just the “engineer-business person” spread that people typically refer to. No….here we’re talking Egyptian pyramids:
The history of engineering projects reveals that most projects have strong similarities. They have requirements, designs, and constraints. They depend on communication, decision making, and combinations of creative and logical thought. Projects usually involve a schedule, a budget, and a customer.
Most importantly, the central task of projects is to combine the works of different people into a singular, coherent whole that will be useful to people or customers. Whether a project is built out of HTML, C++, or cement and steel, there’s an undeniable core set of concepts that most projects share.
I’ve just started reading the book…but I found this really interesting, because we have a tendency to think in the technology industry that our issues are so unique, so never-been-seen-before that there are no models. In fact, there are. They might not always be perfect models, but certainly there are things we can learn from the success and failure of those who have come before…sometimes a long time before.
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