Malte finished reading How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg
The secrets to successfully planning and delivering projects on any scale—from home renovation to space …
The book is organized around eleven principles that can also be summarized into memorable heuristics. Flyvbjerg is able to draw on a lot of relevant data to make his conclusions more realistic and show why his forecasts are closer to what actually happens (how long things take and how expensive they will be). He covers topics like project leadership and management, teams, defining a clear purpose to guide the project, using modularity (building with lego), extending the planning phase and shortening delivery phase (think slow, act fast), using reference-classes to learn from other projects (taking the outside view), minimizing the risk for catastrophic unknown-unknowns (yes, it's possible to deal with unknown-unknowns).
Flyvbjerg's own experience is mostly with infrastructure projects, among those megaprojects, as well as medium-sized building projects. He does mention IT projects from time to time, and other projects made entirely out of code or language. But it is …
The book is organized around eleven principles that can also be summarized into memorable heuristics. Flyvbjerg is able to draw on a lot of relevant data to make his conclusions more realistic and show why his forecasts are closer to what actually happens (how long things take and how expensive they will be). He covers topics like project leadership and management, teams, defining a clear purpose to guide the project, using modularity (building with lego), extending the planning phase and shortening delivery phase (think slow, act fast), using reference-classes to learn from other projects (taking the outside view), minimizing the risk for catastrophic unknown-unknowns (yes, it's possible to deal with unknown-unknowns).
Flyvbjerg's own experience is mostly with infrastructure projects, among those megaprojects, as well as medium-sized building projects. He does mention IT projects from time to time, and other projects made entirely out of code or language. But it is rare he delves deeply into those areas. I'm an educational developer and part of my job is to develop teaching material, settings, plan etc. A process I can learn a lot from this book, but wish I had a perspective that was more from the inside: How big things get done in fields that consist almost entirely of people speaking to each other.
#howbigthingsgetdone #infrastructure #megaprojects #modularity #projectmanagement