Today I turn our project management book review lens to Risk Up Front, by Adam Josephs and Brad Rubenstein. As a pivoter, you might play any number of roles — “job searching is a full-time job”, they say, and you’re balancing that with upskilling and perhaps an ongoing current gig, to say nothing of your other roles: friend, parent, sibling. Which is all to say: your time is precious and limited. In these book reviews I’ll share key takeaways as well as who I think could really benefit from a book like this. I hope they’re helpful to you in determining what makes the cut during your upskilling process!
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Risk Up Front, by Adam Josephs & Brad Rubenstein
The tagline of this book is “Managing Projects in a Complex World”, which I actually think undersells the value this book brings. The authors are really out to change the way that you think about project management; this is a book that is fundamentally concerned with developing your perspective on project management and ultimately your way of being as a PM, with the expectation that your behavior (and that of your team’s) will change as a result of this buy-in. But more on that later.
Josephs & Rubenstein are project managers with long backgrounds in tech, leading initiatives at brands as recognizable as Microsoft, Apple, Sun Microsystems, and Goldman Sachs. One of my favorite things about this book, though, is that they go out of their way to connect their experience at large tech firms (which are often sticky environments organizationally) and generalize it across the experiences of others. I have spent my project management career in startups, mostly with less than 20 full-time employees, and their work resonated with me.
This is the best kind of writeup: backgrounds like theirs allow for access to PM best-practices, while the clear, behavior- and situation-based examples they give let you see yourself and your team in it, no matter where you work.
What Is Risk Up Front About?
The basic premise of Risk Up Front is that as project advance, it becomes dramatically more expensive to make changes to them. Risk Up Front as a methodology is a framework that positions risk-planning as the singularly critical part of project planning, and requires project managers to shift from owning a “project definition” to owning a “committed project definition” — that is, to shift from, in the authors’ words, declaring “We will do our best!” to “It will be so.” Their assertion is that, when projects require (and organizational cultures support) this level of declared commitment, risk identification and mitigation must take a front seat; otherwise, how could a team ever feel comfortable making so broad a claim?
Who Should Read This Book?
I loved this book, and I think anyone looking to develop or deepen their point of view on project management should read it. I am a PM content writer and I found myself changing the way I thought about managing projects over the course of the book. I think it will particularly resonate with folks pivoting out of higher education because of its focus on organizational psychology and team dynamics. The authors clearly have a great deal of experience measuring the gap in “expectations vs reality” that comes from many years of managing people.
I also think it would be great for anyone stepping into (or advising) a team leadership role. Because of Risk Up Front’s focus on organizational culture, the imperative for action here really is for team leaders — but they make it very clear that these leaders need not be CEOs. You can definitely take value from this book as a team lead of any size.
Finally, I’d also say you should read it if you’re planning to move into working in tech. Risk Up Front clearly has its roots in Agile methodology (recall that both authors have a technical PM background), and it’s a somewhat trendy book in those circles. If you move into tech, it’s very likely that many folks in your network (and perhaps even your organizations) will have read the book and have thoughts on it. And if not, this is your opportunity to be the one to bring it to them.
Who Might Put This On Their “Save For Later” List?
If your time is very limited, and you’re trying to use what little you have for immediately-actionable steps toward your pivot, this book probably isn’t for you (yet). While I don’t think the practices covered in the book are overly idealistic, they do require team buy-in: one of the core tenets of the book is that the entire team needs to commit to RUF as a methodology, which means you’re not going to be able to make progress on this through incremental successes.
Moreover, the book is long: it took me several weeks to get through, with a schedule that supported an ambitious reading pace. The content is dense and I often required several read-throughs, as well as referencing earlier parts of the book.
So I’d say if you haven’t landed a role yet (and therefore aren’t sure what your leadership in your new position will look like) and you’re trying to streamline your reading into things you can immediately implement (or discuss implementing with hiring managers) beyond developing a point of view, I’d skip this for now. (If you’re a Pinterest user, you can pin it for later!)
The Bottom Line
I learned a lot from reading Risk Up Front; I wish I’d read it earlier in my PM career, and I’m glad I’ve read it as I move into 2023, where I will assume a lot more responsibility overseeing teams permanently. I think it could be really foundational to how you view project management, though you should know going in that it’s a hefty read. (Perfect for your upcoming December break reading!) I’d recommend it to anyone with the time to invest into reading it!
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