Book Review: Breaking the Code of Project Management

Breaking the Code of Project Management
Alexander Laufer

The genesis of this book come from Laufer’s observation that traditional project management principles need overhauling.  He argues that the growing realisation of the power of empowerment, the poor historical record of project management, the flawed foundation of a major project management tool (PERT), and ‘emerging paradigms’ in research and practice require a new investigation into what is needed to ensure project success.

Laufer is big on using stories as a means of learning and presents his reasons why.  The book brims with stories.

It gave me some discomfort when Laufer referred to the ‘Agile method’ as a ‘project management approach’, given its limited focus on product development (primarily software products).  He also makes the mistake of referring to the ‘four values’ (a pet peeve of mine).

No project management tools appear in this book.  You won’t find discussions of the WBS, PBS, Gantt Charts.  The focus is on what it takes to deliver projects successfully.

Laufer concentrates on what he calls ‘Results-Focused Leadership’, a framework of guiding principles, colour-coded for vividness: yellow for the spirit of will to win, green for planning, brown for implementation, red for people and organisations, and grey for communications.

Recommendation: A practical book on how to deliver projects, yet very different from the standard project management books which cover the tools and principles of project management.  It almost ignores traditional project management.

Book Review: The Power of Doing Less: Why Time Management Courses Don't Work And How To Spend Your Precious Life On The Things That Really Matter

Fergus O’Connell claims that the real reason why time management courses fail is because ironically, they try to teach time management.  This is the wrong approach, says the author. What they should be teaching instead is that people should aim to do less work. This is the aim of this book.

A major portion of the book is about convincing the reader that the right strategy is to reduce the work you need to do: decide which ones you need to do and which ones you don’t need to do.
 
The rest of the book provides quick and easy techniques to drop unnecessary work, and prevent new work from coming to you, or back to you.

Apart from the main point about reducing what you need to do, this is a basic work on regaining more time for yourself.

Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing

Philosopher: Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Pragmatist: Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Academic: Anything worth doing is worth publishing. 

Businessman: Anything worth doing must be worth doing.

Entrepreneur: Anything worth doing I already did last week.

Accountant: Anything worth doing is worth recording the worth.

Procurement: Anything worth doing must be done at the lowest cost.

Frederick Taylor: Anything worth doing can be done more efficiently.

Lean Consultant: Anything worth doing must be done with the least waste.

Venture Capitalist: Anything worth doing? Call me.

Procrastinator: Anything worth doing is worth doing tomorrow.

Agilist: Anything worth doing should be prioritised in a backlog.

Manager: Anything worth doing can be delegated

Economist: Anything worth doing, surely someone has already done it.

Project Manager: Anything worth need to be delivered on time, to budget, to scope.

Risk Manager: Anything worth doing must be worth doing on a risk-adjusted basis.

Pessimist: Nothing is worth doing

Optimist: Everything is worth doing. With a smile.

Cynic: Anything worth doing is always done for the wrong reason.