project manager thinking and mindset, exemplified

March 14, 2023 4:25 PM

I'm looking for books, articles, etc. that *don't* merely enumerate the specific qualities, attributes or leanings a person needs to have to professionally play the role of Project Manager. I'm looking instead for examples and observations of of those kinds of tendencies and qualities at play.

Do you have any stories of project managers or project management that your admire or which were particularly insightful or informed your idea of what makes a good project manager? Something slightly beyond or deeper than "Jane was great at following these abstractly enumerated industry-standard best practices"

posted by armoir from antproof case to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Scott Berkun’s Making Things Happen: The Art of Project Management (2008) is trying to be something like this. That link has a couple of sample chapters you can check out to see if it’s the kind of vibe you are looking for. I read it in 2008ish and I know there are ideas in it that I think about often — I’m just not sure which ones anymore!
posted by xueexueg at 4:32 PM on March 14, 2023

The Deadline is a novel about project management. It’s quite good, I recall, and was recommended to me when I was studying for the PMP exam.
posted by seawallrunner at 8:39 PM on March 14, 2023

You might want to look over Mary Poppendieck's "The Tyranny of 'The Plan'".

Also the "Inversion Principle".

Now, at work the team I am in really does try to follow "The Cult of Done Manifesto".

I think I'm kind of on the edge of the question asked, but I think that project managers that get "the big picture" or "can keep things moving" or "avoid trouble" are those that get my respect. I really don't care about scrums, stories, agile, retrospectives or politics. Stuff is either getting done in a reasonably expeditious manner without major screw ups and by leveraging team member strengths in various areas, or it's not.

I'm not a project manager, but I've spent from 1975 until now in IT and I can tell when things are out of control and when they're not.

For what it's worth.
posted by forthright at 8:59 PM on March 14, 2023

+1 for Berkun's book - I learnt a huge amount from that. You might like James T Brown's A Handbook of Program Management. It is at the next level "up" from project management but a lot of it is very relevant at the project level and it has a lot of hands on advice and tips on specific areas such as stakeholder management, team building, risk management etc.
posted by crocomancer at 3:50 AM on March 15, 2023

Some time ago, there was a buzz about "management by walking around". Easily Googled . Not really a be-all and end-all, but it does make the case for getting out of your office and seeing things for yourself.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:21 AM on March 15, 2023