Overview
- The aim of this book is “to pick over the sadly inadequate body of knowledge that is project management today, and generally challenge just about everything, eliminating that which you don’t need to bother to learn about, or should already know, leaving you only with the parts that will give you the results you want.”
- The book is targeted at “…those ‘projects as usual project managers’ who will drive most of the change inside organisations tomorrow and beyond, and who really need help to do that”
What’s inside
- What you think of this book is likely to be significantly shaped by what you think about what most people would call “swearing” in a business context. The first few pages contained so much swearing that I had to go back and check whether I had imagined it. I hadn’t.
- Not that I’m offended by swearing. I’m no prude; I like a good f**k as much as the next person. Swearing is like seasoning on food: used judiciously, it adds flavour and interest. But in the same way that food smothered with too much seasoning becomes unpalatable, indiscriminate swearing becomes distracting noise that only serves to obscure to the reader the very message the writer was trying to convey.
- After the first few pages, I felt as though I was a teenage girl who had been invited back to her new boyfriend’s house, only to find that his bedroom is littered with soiled underwear, smelly beer cans and pizza boxes. And he thinks it’s cool. But is isn’t
- So the rest of this review will focus on what I got from the book after I had put the style of its delivery to one side.
- The book defines project management as “the temporary provision of provision of structure and transparency in order to solve short-term, complicated problems or to realise opportunities”. I like that, as it avoids some of the shortcomings of the more traditional definitions.
- It goes on to assert that project management should not be “owned” by the various institutions and associations that claim that role on behalf of the PM community. Rather, project management should be owned by the legion of people who practice it in their work every day – the vast majority of whom are not members of any professional PM organisation.
- Having thus debunked traditional project management, the book then describes “seven cracking ideas to make project management better”
Some of my favourite take-aways
Amongst the ideas presented, I found the following favourites:
- Many change initiatives are “projects as usual” – somewhere between “business as usual” operations and full on, major transformation. Such projects require only a subset of key project management skills, which can usefully be acquired by just about anyone in business.
- Planning is a Good Thing to do (so make sure that you actually do it rather than just leaping straight into delivery), but planning can’t account for everything that may happen. So be ready for some surprises. Be ready to evaluate different responses quickly, to work out which is the best for your project.
- If things go wrong on a project, don’t look for someone (other than yourself) to blame. Instead, hear the truth, understand what happened. “Own” the failure, take responsibility for any part you may have had in it, learn from the experience. Move on as a wiser person, less likely to fail next time. Fail; Learn; Succeed; Repeat
- Communication (that is, transmission, dissemination) will only get you so far. If you send the right message to the right person at the right time and then help them to do something useful with it, you have engagement (happier, more interested and co-operative stakeholders). This is far more useful than mere communication.
- Many project failures are not the result of a single big event, but many little ones. This is because the big and scary risks will have been identified and hopefully mitigated early on. But the little one gang up together and sneak up on you when you’re not looking (an idea that Susie talks about in her Scary Scars interview – look for it here as a video or here as a podcast). So keep on top of the little risks and issues and don’t let them accumulate into a big pool of trouble.
- If you wait for permission to be empowered, then you’re not really empowered. Instead, stop waiting, learn some new things, and just start delivering value.
- Celebrate successes with the team when they happen. Use your judgement on the size of success and the size of the celebration – use the team as a barometer.
- The end of the book summarises the rest of the book (twice!) in case you weren’t paying attention the first time, but somehow still made it all the way to the end to read the summaries.
The Verdict
- The body of the book is considerably less sweary than the introduction (and all the better for it in my opinion).
- I think that the book broadly achieves its aim of conveying the very essence of project management to those who either don’t need or don’t want to become full-time, 100% project managers.
- I think that it would offer considerably better value for money as a paperback or e-book for half the hardback price.
- I’m not sure it’s entirely my cup of tea (sorry Susie, but there it is). But then I’ve been informed on more than one occasion I was born an old fart (wearing slippers, drinking sherry and smoking a pipe), so I guess I’m not in the target audience (and probably never was).
- So if you like short, sweary business books that dish out the kind of no-nonsense advice you’d get from an after-hours conversation in the pub with the “character” at the end of the bar, you’ll bloody love this! Crack on.
| Full Title: | Project Management: It’s all bollocks! The Complete Exposure of the World of, and the Value of, Project Management |
| Authors: | Susie Palmer-Trew and Peter Taylor |
| Publisher: | Routledge |
| ISBN: | 978-0-367-14090-8 |
| Pages: | 114 |
| Pragmatic PMO Rating: | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| RRP: | £29.99 (hardback) (Review copy supplied free of charge by the authors) |
