Don’t expect your family to be impressed when you finally become famous. Last year I published my first book, “Scrappy Project Management – The 12 Predictable and Avoidable pitfalls every Project Faces.” It was a huge success. (Well, certainly nothing on the order of Harry Potter, but pretty big for a project management book) We had 150 guests at the launch party, and the book has been among the top project management books in the US since the October hullabaloo. What’s my family’s reaction? I’d have gotten more attention if I’d gone hunting and dragged home a deer with a big set of horns. You see, my family loves hunting and they get all excited about a deer flung over the hood of a car or a nice freezer full of freshly butchered deer chops. (I’m actually quite a good shot myself, but refrain from hunting because I don’t want to kill cute animals, even if I do eat them occasionally. ) But would they get an adrenaline rush from a family member writing a book on project management? Definitely NOT on the top ten list of things that gets them to put aside the remote control.  Even though they seemed less than impressed with what took me 3 years to produce (heck, that’s WAY longer than the 9 months it took for my siblings wives to produce grandchildren), I sent my mom and dad a book, and both brothers, too. They promptly used them to prop up their computer monitors to achieve a more ergonomic PC configuration (I think my mom swatted some mosquitoes with it first). Continue reading→