Jim Benson

The title of this book is a bit misleading. You won't find there any equation, magic formula, or framework to copy-paste in order to alleviate all the problems organizations face. Instead, you may discover a methodical approach to building a collaboration system, unique and tailored to your team/org.

The ideas presented here are simple - visual management, psychological safety, transparency, setting explicit and reasonable expectations, allowing people to their job effectively, and trusting in their judgment - but they are not easy to implement. This book helps to notice anti-collaborative patterns and presents a way to fix them. It doesn't promise an easy or quick process but when done right, it can improve not only collaboration but also the effectiveness and well-being of the people involved.

I'm afraid that some readers might shrug this book off and say it's just common sense. But as we know common sense is not so common. Ideas presented here come from decades of experience - not some lofty slogans and manifests - just good old practice. And often practice is counterintuitive to popular notions, e.g. micromanagement might be helpful or even necessary, self-organizing teams might be new corporate silos, and Agile might make teams very fragile.

I find this book a bit chaotic. I had an opportunity to meet Jim and this book reads exactly how he talks :D Which is engaging but can be difficult to reference later on. I had problems with quickly finding specific passages, so use your notes, highlights, and bookmarks to their full extent.

The only thing I struggled with is the assumption that in the right environment, everyone is a professional - competent, responsible, communicative, and making sensible decisions (well, maybe except VPs and other senior leaders, who occasionally get a really bad rep in this book). I'd like to believe in this rule... but every rule has an exception. I'd love to read an extra chapter on how to deal with such exceptions that could spoil or slow down the collaborative effort.

I wholeheartedly share the author's vision of the collaborative system and the right environment. I'll surely reference this book often to find the inspiration and courage to push back on wasteful work and mindless practices that foster anti-collaborative behaviors.… (mere)

I’ve always been interested in cognitive bias when it comes to the way we look at the world and how it changes your own Lebensraum. And if you apply that to how we deal with people and in particular on how we go about doing project management, we may come to very weird conclusions. The main question is: is project Management dependent on our own cognitive bias or is more about our powers of reasoning when doing project management (e.g., problem solving, etc.)?

The questions about "reasoning" are only simple arithmetic problems. Although all the book has to offer is that "psychology" is basically trying to explain semi-random decisions. Ones that can be hugely influenced by uncontrollable circumstances: like whether or not there is a "matriarchal juror across the table is speaking both frequently and sensibly" present. And even then, few (if any) experiments are reproducible and none produce any quantifiable data - nothing that can be measured as there are no instruments available, nor are there universally agreed definitions, objectively identifiable factors or any units of measure whatsoever. The subject (you can't call it a science) is close to where alchemy was, 1000 years ago. Some occasionally observed phenomena that have vague explanations at the macroscopic level but absolutely no idea of what goes on in detail, to cause them. Most of what I read of psychology, and indeed other social science, when applied to areas like politics, economics, project management or broadly to society or people in general, amounts to evidence for the obvious (e.g., everybody has some biases, two heads are better then one, etc) but near zero explanatory power beyond this (e.g., what views are more or less biased, how to judge this, what causes it, etc). When it comes to project Management, overconfidence almost leads to wrong project decisions. Anticipating more difficulty than appeared means analysing the challenges rather than jumping to what seems like the obvious answer.

I'm sure human emotions can be a valid subject of study when it comes to project management. But I don't think it can be made into a "scientific" psychological study. The brain mapping involved in neuroscience isn't psychology; it’s a scientific study of how the brain interacts and how it operates when humans feel certain emotional states. Thus is gets to the root of causal mechanisms in the brain which elicit emotional states. On the other hand, psychology is more concerned in examining second hand data. It usually starts with a theory and then someone tries to make it work through an empirical sample. I think this is what it makes it compatible and highly complementary with the ideologies you may find within political "science".

For when applied to project management, the science is in the method of exploration. As with all disciplines, some practitioners adhere to scientific principles and others do not (I'm thinking "PMBoK" here). There are project managers who do not, just as there are psychologists who do.

BTW emotions are real, they are part of human nature and thus a valid subject of scientific study. How the results are used is a different issue entirely. Benson's take on this offers nothing new.

Book Review PMP Project Management Projects… (mere)

Jim Benson provides a basic overview of how to use personal kanban in various settings to improve workflow. His discussion about the theory was a bit difficult to follow in the beginning, as I wasn't familiar with some of the terms (or maybe because I read it while I had the flu), but most of the text was straight forward.

I appreciated the summaries at the end of each chapter and the variations on the basic kanban that the author provided. His use of concrete examples to explain abstract ideas were helpful, too. For instance, he used a congested freeway to explain time management. If one tries to cram too many tasks into the workflow, nothing moves, just like too many cars on the freeway (a frequent occurrence in the greater Seattle area) causes gridlock.

The book focuses on using a physical kanban, but the technique can also be applied to various digital applications. I created a sticky note board on my office cabinets to try to tame my personal office, homeschool mom, and household manager life.… (mere)