The Written "Unwrittens"

My wife is a book collector and seller. At any given moment in time, she has somewhere around 5,000 books in her inventory stacked and shelved and scattered throughout the house. Occasionally, among the many thousands, a gem arises. Usually that gem takes the form of a rare or collectible book that can command a high online price-- but sometimes, the gem is even more special. Sometimes, it's a book that hubby wants to keep. Enter today's treasure: "The Unwritten Laws of Engineering," by W.J. King:

Published back in 1944 by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), this little 50-page pamphlet is a truly fantastic read, and while the title implies it's an "engineering" book, the fact is much of the book is focused on team interactions, how to make and document decisions, and general project organization and structure. Said simply, the book is so germane to the subject of engineering project management that I intend to cover many of its individual lessons herein this blog over the coming months...

...but the bottom line for today's post is this: despite the myriad of technological and communication advancements in the nearly 70 subsequent years since this book's publication, the "laws" of engineering management have not materially changed. In fact, if anything, they've hardened. Said another way, the very things we PMs struggle with today are essentially the same issues and concerns that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers struggled with at the close of WWII.  I literally found myself nodding my head and mumbling agreement and "amens" to the words on the page as I read through booklet the first time. The more things change, the more they evidently stay the same.

This is definitely a collectible in the truest sense of the word. Stay tuned for some of its wisdom.

© Copyright 2015 Mark H.Warner. All rights reserved.