The Art of Project Management

Science, engineering, and architecture

Brand, Stewart, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built(Penguin Books, 1995) ISBN 0140139966

This text accelerated my belief that the things I knew regarding projects and design from the technology sector had application and relevance generally to the world. This is one of my favorite books on architecture because of how physically approachable it is: lots of pictures and examples. Brand writes and thinks like a good teacher, making things interesting, and on occasion funny, as he leads your curiosity down clever, epiphany-laden paths.

Chiles, John, Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology (Harper Business, 2002) ISBN 0066620821

From airline crashes to oil-rig sinkings, the stories in this book point out the direct relationship between complex engineering and their fragile, simple, nonlinear weaknesses that can lead to disaster. Although it reads more like a series of long essays on specific disasters than a book with a central or connected theme, I found all of the stories of technological disaster interesting and thought provoking.

Cross, Hardy, Engineers and Ivory Towers (Ayer, 1952) ISBN 083691404X

Found two references to this book on the same day, in fairly unrelated materials, and felt compelled to dig it up, and found gold. It's an extended rant by an engineer on the state of the engineering profession circa 1952. He questions many of the popular attitudes among engineers, from general hubris, to lack of ...