Don’t Overcomplicate It! Project Management with P3.express (Management)

I read Dmitry Ilyenkov and Valeria Ilyenkova’s book on project management and liked it. Dima lent me the book; we have known each other since Teamlead Conf 2020, where we both spoke. To me, Don’t Overcomplicate It! is the Write, Cut of project management, in a good way (||I had mixed feelings about Write, Cut itself||). There are plenty of examples, plain language, a clear structure, and no sense that you are about to be buried in terminology for its own sake. The book also offers more than talk: P3.express is a practical framework of 33 steps across 7 phases, designed to make projects more transparent and predictable without a major overhaul of your processes. I liked that simplicity. I have been far too spoiled by IPMA and PMI theory, the many layers of PMBoK, and all the wonderful bureaucratic splendour that so often comes with project management :)

Here is what I liked about the book:

1. It is very grounded. The advice is almost always backed by stories and case studies, from Boeing and SpaceX to the Sydney Opera House, Denver Airport and the authors’ own screwups. That gives the recommendations something concrete to stand on.
2. You can comfortably give it to beginners who need a straightforward, accessible introduction to working on projects. You can also give it to experienced people who are tired of bureaucracy and want to simplify their processes without losing control altogether. The authors explicitly say it is useful not just for project managers, but also for team leads, IT business owners, analysts and others who regularly deliver projects.
3. Technical leaders and engineers should definitely read it. Not because everyone urgently needs to become a PM, but because it explains the basics well: what a project sponsor does, why you need a short project summary, how to break down deliverables, why regular Go/No-Go decisions help, and how to stop dragging dead initiatives along just because you have already poured time, effort and money into them.

I particularly liked the section on the sunk cost fallacy, illustrated through Concorde. The authors explain the Concorde effect: a project is clearly going nowhere, but people keep pushing it because they have already invested too much. P3.express addresses this with recurring Go/No-Go checkpoints. The question is not “How can we push this over the line?” but an honest “Do we still need this project, or are we just suffering through it out of inertia?” A very sensible thought for corporations and large internal initiatives.

Briefly, the six principles of P3.express are:

• Choose results and facts over habits and attachments.
• Protect the team’s energy and conserve resources.
• Act proactively.
• Look for the weakest link in the system.
• Do nothing without a clear purpose.
• Use reusable elements: templates, checklists and repeatable steps.

The project lifecycle in P3.express is also simple and clear:

• Start the project.
• Plan the cycle.
• Manage the work weekly.
• Manage the work daily.
• Close the cycle.
• Complete the project.
• Review the benefits and new ideas after the project.

If you want a sensible book to recommend to the people around you—product managers, team leads, engineers, new managers and exhausted leaders—rather than another grand “body of knowledge” à la PMBoK, Don’t Overcomplicate It! looks like a very good choice. Not a replacement for PMBoK, but a good antidote to it. And I have read PMBoK in three different editions.

P.S. Dima and I have agreed to record a podcast episode to discuss project management in general and this book in particular. Stay tuned...

#Management #Leadership #ProjectManagement #Processes #Engineering