4BOOKSIf you are interested developing a lightweight project management ethos, may I recommend these four books:

  • Creativity, Inc. : Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull
  • Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland
  • The Project Manager’s Guide to Mastering Agile by Charles Cobb
  • The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks

I am huge believer in Agile and Scrum philosophies to project management, chiefly because it really is impossible to know what you will want a product to be at the beginning of development. The need for requirement flexibility is huge in the breakneck speed world we live in.  Admittedly I do not follow the concepts religiously, but the overall framework concepts are sound and I try to apply them to each project as appropriate.

 

I recommend listening and/or reading the books in the order above.  The order is meant to start from very high-level management and leadership concepts, and to answer the questions of why use Agile and Scrum concepts.  The third book gets you into the details of how to actually incorporate those concepts into your workflow. Lastly, the Mythical Man Month of the esteemed Fred Brooks is simply put a seminal piece of work that every tech leader should read. Originally written in 1975 it shows that the issues was face in today’s tech arena are nothing new and that more often than not we do not learn from our past mistakes. His takeaways, in my humble opinion, are the foundation of all good tech project management thesis that have come since.