Fluff and Project Management

Each week I generally take a quick glance at the Business Week best seller list to see if there are any new  or unusual books that might hold my interest on a long flight.  It’s always the usual suspects… books that purport to identify some until now unknown aspect of leadership such as The No Asshole Rule and Leadership and Self-Deception, get rich without working delusions such as The 4-Hour Workweek and The Automatic Millionaire, and the self-perpetuating best sellers such as The World is Flat and What Color is Your Parachute?  Blah blah blah.  Some are good entertaining reads, few say anything truly meaningful.

But one sort of stuck out this week: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge.  Say what? A deep project management text book on a list full of fluff?  What the heck?  I’ve thumbed through the book, and it is top notch… but not exactly Sunday plane reading.  The author is… a standards committee!  If I was drooling at the prospect of another United $5 box lunch and contemplating the choice between watching Oceans 13 for the thirtieth time and reading that book, I would probably default to daydreaming about having the wealth in just one of George Clooney’s pockets.  I guess I should have picked up The Automatic Millionaire after all.

Don’t get me wrong… it is a great book for anyone involved with project management.  Chock full of tools and techniques and pitfalls to avoid.  Just make sure you have a source of caffeine nearby.