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For the past few weeks I’ve been reading Mao : The Unknown Story. I was interested last time I went to Shanghai, and decided I’d get smart about the founder of the world’s largest communist party. The book claims that Mao was responsible for over 70 million Chinese Deaths. The Communist Party seems to still believe in the good of Mao, and unlike Stalin’s death in the case of the Russian Communist Party, did little to disavow themselves of him when he died. I believe that sentiment is slowly changing and I remember the NPR story on this book where they referred to how people now say that he was 70% good which is a big change.

The book was fascinating. If you have any interest in China I’d recommend it. It’s a bit thick and detailed so I found myself board at times. Mostly because hearing about the things that he did over and over got tiring.

I think I’d like to read about Stalin next.

One thing that I found interesting was that this is now the third book I’ve read that paints a pretty grim picture for Henry Kissenger. I don’t know much about that guy, but he seems to have gotten his finger in a lot of things.

When I was in Egypt, I decided to read Flags of our Fathers. It is written by James Bradley who is the son of one of the flag raisers. Before reading this book I knew jack about Iwo Jima. The Iwo Jima photo everyone knows when they see it is of the picture that was taken by Joe Rosenthal. It's apparently the most reproduced image in history, and isn't even a picture of the original flag raising. Nevertheless, the story is incredible.

The book is about the men who are in that picture. It talks about their lives before the war, life as a marine in WWII, and what became of them after the war. I can't begin to describe how I felt while reading this book. It was one of the few times in my life where I felt actual immense gratitude for the sacrifices of those who fought and the many who died in the battle (it was one of the deadliest in American History). I really believe every American should read this book, but for now I'll leave you with a quote that was chiseled outside the cemetery where 3 of the flag raisers lay:

When you go home
Tell them for us and say
For your tomorrow
We gave our today

When I saw that Scott Berkun was writing a book called The Art of Project Management I was pretty excited. Scott spent much of his career as a Program Manager at Microsoft, and I knew that the book would be chock full of information that goes into great detail about what this wacky job is about, and what it means to be a great Program Manager.

On my flight to and from Shanghai, I read the book mostly cover to cover. I say mostly because it’s 448 pages! The reality is that some of the chapters were just plain obvious to me, so I skimmed them. This book will be whatever you want or need it to be. If you are brand new to the PM job, or a seasoned veteran who joined a new team and is trying to explain to the folks around you what your job is about, this book will help you. I know it’s going to help me.

I would go so far as to say this. If you are in this role at a software company, and have been doing it for less than 3 years, this book should be your text book. Nothing will matter more in your career than having a good grasp and mastery of many of the skills highlighted in the book. If you are an old timer, then this book will be an interesting read to say the least, if not help you with a situation you might be facing today (or tomorrow).

While I’m not going to write pages and pages about this book, I though I would highlight some of my favorite chapters or sections. I wrote and underlined a lot in my copy and I plan to go back and reference these things when necessary.

A Brief History of Project Management

This is the first chapter in the book and has a lot of meat! The main take always for me in this chapter were “The simpler view of what you do, the more power and focus you will have in doing it” and “simple doesn’t mean easy”.

The best example Scott gives here is that of running a marathon. What’s simpler than running? You start running and you stop after 26.2 miles. If I were to do this, there would be an ambulance at the 5th mile to take me to the hospital.

I’ve seen a lot of PMs run projects by creating massive amounts of tools to analyze and report on data about the project. This sounds great and fancy stuff always looks neat, but the tools aren’t going to ship the product, you are. I like and do maintain a very simple view of complex systems. It allows you to be agile. It’s no excuse for not knowing or understanding everything about what is going on, but try and create the least amount of overhead for yourself and your team.

Scott also discusses the history of the PM role at Microsoft. It’s critical to understand why there are so many PMs at Microsoft, and how critical they are in getting stuff into customers hands. He discusses the various traits of PMs and what good ones can do. For me the most important trait is tolerate ambiguity/pursue perfection and courage/fear. “The brave are those who feel fear but chose to take action anyway”.

There is a great topic on confusing process with goals. It’s easy for a PM to try and quantify things that don’t need to be quantified, and fall into a trap of unnecessarily paying attention to your charts, tables, and tasks. Scott paints a good picture of how you evolve into someone who ends up believing that the data and the process are the project, and you lose sight of what your team is trying to do for the business. He makes a bold statement that “your project is your team. Manage the team, not the checklists.” I can’t tell you how important those words are. Sadly for some people, they don’t know what managing the team means, but the good news is that Scott goes into much greater detail in Chapter 10.

On Leadership, Scott states “…leaders and managers are hired to amplify the value of everyone around them”. Again, if you are a great leader you allow people to work to their potential, and you can even increase the abilities and output of the team. These are hard things to measure and very intangible traits (unlike writing code or a test case). Scott also states that “It takes a combination of conviction, confidence, and awareness to be effective and happy as a leader of a team”. If you lack, or haven’t developed as a leader yet, I can guarantee that you won’t be happy, and neither will your team. Leading a project is like drinking from a fire hose, and you need to be prepared or have the support to be coached to do this job well.

Scott ends the chapter with a phrase to describe how he added unique value. He calls this “Making good stuff happen”. On our team, Aditya and I have coined the phrase, “Less talking, more doing” and I think we have the same idea when we say this. The premise is that you can accomplish much more and add a great deal of value if you, as a leader, spend more time with each person on the team than anyone else. In doing this you may influence more decisions than anyone else in the organization, and what you bring to the team will be contagious (good or bad) for the rest of the team.

Final Thoughts

There are many excellent chapters in the book, and hundreds of sentences and insights that really tell the story of Program Management and how to be better at this role. I learned much from this bug and validated much of what I know and do. My favorite chapter is Chapter 10 How not to annoy people:process, email and meetings. This is a must read for every Microsoft Employee .

A couple more things I picked up are that empowering people isn’t necessarily being a good manager, but caring about the work that they do, and staying involved with the decisions they need help with go hand in hand with personal growth. Chapter 13 has a great example of this when Scott had to solve a cross team problem and his boss at the time, Hillel Cooperman, provided him guidance that allowed Scott to make the right decision for himself and the business.

Get the book, read it. You won’t regret it. You’ll likely find something that you aren’t doing well, or could be doing better. Or something you can do to help make your team better.

I really need to read more, cause I really enjoy it. I picked up Ask the Pilot last week at the very excellent SeaTac Terminal A. It caught my eye, and after I read the description I had to have it.

You see, I have this thing about flying. I LOVE to fly. I mean every time I get in a plane and take off, I sort of still feel amazed and special. I've always loved flying since I was a kid and would travel to Egypt every summer for most of my life. I never got tired of it. I feel the same way about traveling to new places. Love it.

This book is like an FAQ about flying. It answers many obscure questions about take off, landing, planes, turbulence, automated landings, training, life as a pilot, the airline industry and so on. It's highly recommended if you are at all curios about what the airline industry is like, and what makes a plane go up and down .

I just finished reading The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. This was the most sobering book I have ever read. The first time I heard of The Rape of Nanking was when I watched a brief show on the history channel a few years ago. It was mostly shocking to me as I had never heard of the incident, but not quite as horrifying as this book depicts.

I'm always amazed at how little I learned about US and World history in high school and college. In high school we were required to take US History but our course only made it to World War I. In college I was required to take European History. That's it. Since I was a Biology major, my coursework was so loaded with science classes I didn't bother taking any history electives. Big mistake. I've dabbled in a few history books since then. A few years ago I read A History of the Twentieth Century by Martin Gilbert and most recently A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Both were excellent, but no substitute for the entire history of course. It was like reading a Cliff Notes on history, but it did place much of the events of today in a much better perspective.

Anyway, I highly recommend Iris' book. It covers a very sad episode in world history and some very interesting biographies of some people who undoubtabley saved tens of thousands by risking their lives for many years. I'm amazed that human beings are capable of such horror, and that to this day, there have been no formal reparations for the events that took place in Nanking.

Iris Chang committed suicide last year as a result of mental illness. Her book has no doubt changed the world perspective on the events of Nanking during WWII, and she deserves a lot of credit for dedicating so much of herself for telling the story to the world.