“All projects are thick at one end, much, much thinner in the middle, and then thick again at the far end,” according to Peter Taylor in his book The Lazy Project Manager: How to be Twice as Productive and Still Leave the Office Early. Thus projects are the inverse of brontosauruses, which are thin at both ends and thick in the middle. Most of the book is structured around this idea of what you need to do at the beginning of a project, what you need to do in the middle, and what you need to do at the end.
The author is happy to dispense some Machiavellian advice: “It’s important to let everyone know that you have arrived and that you demand that things are done your way, the right way,” and “A good way to gain the upper hand is to ensure that the people…who may give you some problems have deliverables very early on in the project.” This advice is good advice, even if expressed in a somewhat blunt manner.
The book is short and entertaining, but it does contain a lot of practical wisdom on project management, particularly in the chapters on “Quick Tips to Productive Lazy Heaven” and “Even Quicker Tips for the Really Lazy”. You could get much of the productive value from the book just by reading those chapters, but then you would miss out on the author’s witticisms and strange and wonderful stories.