In my family we spend a lot of time watching different competition-style shows on The Food Network such as Iron Chef, Chopped and Dinner: Impossible. My wife likes watching most of the shows because they’re short and show creative people making great food. I enjoy that aspect of it as well, but the bigger thing that fascinates me is the many different examples of teams coming together quickly to tackle complicated tasks in limited time frames. The project management and organizational skills required to succeed in any of those competitions are identical to the skills project leads need to finish software projects under tight deadlines.

Check out some of the lessons in project management from The Food Network by reading the full post on the O’Reilly InsideRIA blog.