learn more about project management

finished up this book, which is a fairly easy read. It conveys the concepts through a story, which makes it much more pleasant to go through (as opposed to a list of to-do not-to-do items, for example).

The concepts are not too far from common sense, and thinking about it, they appear to be applicable to my projects as well. The first step is, of course, to identify “the goal” (aside: in our freshman year back in home, they gave us a red book _{I can’t recall it’s title…} about reading and writing skills in English, which was a great book loaded with useful advices. The very first advice on that book was “clarify your purpose” and I fell in love with that phrase… scribbled it all over my notes, in fact :) Over the years, getting busy with tasks and stuff I lost sight of it, but now it’s time to revisit it.) That’s probably the single most important step I have to take.

I think I’ll consider the management concepts at two different levels: (1) process flow for each project and (2) daily time management. In both cases, I’ll probably go through the standard process of sorting out the “manufacturing” steps, identifying the bottlenecks, and using some of the tricks (for example, off-loading… I love that concept ;)) to become more “productive.”

it’s time to acknowledge the usefulness of the standard techniques these people have developed to run projects more efficiently (Yeah, the corporate world has contributed too). Anyway, there are certain things I think I need to pay attention to: the criteria whether to take up new projects; clarifying the project steps and flow; and having well-defined milestones, deliverables, and time-lines for each project. In parallel, I’ll look up some of the standard resources and try to apply those concepts to my own projects. _{Well, they’re mostly common sense ideas, but I don’t have much of it myself, you see :)}