A very productive read

Just finished reading The Art of Project Management by Scoot Berkun last night, this is a good read for anyone who has to lead or organize a project. Berkun was a project manager at Microsoft on the internet explorer project. He is a very good writer, not overly technical; in fact he is quite philosophical. A coach is a project manager, in fact anytime he used PM (project manager) I just thought coach. There is even a chapter on how to deal with politics; boy did I wish I would have had that 35 years ago. Here are couple of great quotes that appear in the book on planning.

“No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Well in my opinion a battle works according to plan. The plan is only a common base for changes. It’s very important that everyone should know the plan, so you can change it easily…the modern battle is very fluid, and you have make decisions very fast- mostly not according to plan. But at least everybody knows where you’re coming from, and [then] where you’re going to, more or less.” Major General Dan Laner, Israeli Defense Forces Commander