Pacelli, L., The Project Management Advisor. 18 Major Project Screw Ups, and How to Cut Them Off at the Pass, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River NJ, USA, 2004

I bought this book off the web and I couldn't "look inside" so I didn't really know what I was getting. I was surprised to see it was a fairly small book in terms of pages. But the size belies its value I suspect.

Lonnie Pacelli has put together a tight little package of wisdom, based it would seem on many of his experiences at Accenture and later Microsoft Corporation. He has 18 "screw ups" to share. ....read more

Along with Donna Cox of Mantra Training and Development, I attended the Canberra Business Council (CBC) (of which HolisTech® is a Corporate Member) and Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) luncheon. Apart from doing a little networking (not that I am good at that), we listened to an interesting presentation by Dr Michael Schaper, the Deputy Chairperson of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). It was titled Small Business - Future Opportunities & Challenges.  ....read more

Canberra is a small city of some 300,000+ without a significant performance venue, apart from outdoor venues including the football stadium (Canberra Stadium). So because it is so small and because we have limited venues, we often miss out on the big entertainment tours. I am pleased to say though that Cirque du Soleil is currently in Canberra in their Big Top on the side of Lake Burley Griffin near the National Library of Australia and Questacon (Australia's National Science & Technology Centre).

Johansson, F., The Medici Effect: Breakthrough insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts and Cultures, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2004

Johansson has produced an interesting story here. It's interesting because it is provides a thesis (perhaps the wrong word) on how and perhaps why, innovation occurs or why some people are able to gain breakthrough insights and others not. It's not an academic text, but it does have a "folksy" type of appeal with its stories and approach, which kind of makes me feel that it doesn't have that "robustness" to make it a real solid contribution, although I also suspect many will find it useful. It is all a bit lightweight and has a "guru" type feel to it that always makes me a bit suspicious of the validity of some of the insights.

Rich, B.R. and Janos, Y., Skunk Works, Little Brown and Company, New York, 1994

I have had this book in my library for quite some time and although I've browsed it before, I recently had the opportunity to actually read it. Why I didn't read it earlier, I just don't know because it is just so full of stories and wisdom on many levels.

For those who don't know - the Skunk Works were (are still?) a top secret Lockheed shop for the design, development and manufacture of advanced and innovative aerospace systems.

Camrass, R. and Farncombe, M., Atomic: Reforming the Business Landscape into the New Structures of Tomorrow, Capstone Publishing Limited, UK, 2004

Atomic attempts to identify the future business construct based upon trends identified today. Camrass and Farncombe take the analogy of an "atom" that can become part of larger molecules to form value adding business structures. These are more agile and focused organisations than the monolithic businesses today.

I was pointed to this site by Graham Durant-Law as Torsten had commented on my review of PMOz and SEPG. Torsten also has a comprehensive overview of the conference here. I agree with a lot of what he has to say and have commented on both his entries on his blog.

Bennett, W. and Crawley, S., Wayne Bennett - Don't Die with the Music in You, ABC Books, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2007

I have this question I ask at dinners/lunches which is "If you could have any three people as dinner guests who would you have?" with the variations of dead or alive or alive only or politicians or sports people and so on. It can sometimes give you an insight into the person, but it always throws up surprises as often they are an obscure person. I am shallow enough to admit that Elle McPherson is always on my list (...because she is an inspirational business person ... duh!!). BUT ...the other one is Wayne Bennett ...and I often change the third person.

Milton, N, Knowledge Management for Teams and Projects, Chandos Publishing, Oxford, 2005

This book started slowly for me. But once I could see where Nick Milton was coming from, quite a few things "clicked". Being a project and program manager myself, some of his concepts resonated tremendously and I will implement them in some of the areas I work in including some of my clients.

Humphrey, Watts, S., Winning with Software: An Executive Strategy, Addison-Wesley, Boston, 2002

The message here is that if you wish to develop good software, particularly of any significant size, you need a robust process and a team of disciplined programmers/engineers. The operative words here are robust and disciplined. These two terms, particularly the discipline one, resonate particularly well with me, because one of the significant causes of a problem project is the lack of discipline to follow a defined process. The further message is that "quality counts" - even more so than schedule. This is particularly relevant to any business that does software engineering or projects of any sort.