How do we become good project managers? What does it take to become a true professional?

This book gives depth to these crucial questions. It explains and illustrates the experiences and professional capacities we must acquire to become good at what we do. The entry point is project management, and this entry point is used to define what in general makes us become good professionals. The book shows that our professional capacity is so much more than our technical abilities and shows that becoming a true professional today is defined by three key factors:

• Our ability to accumulate relevant professional reference points and contexts.
• Our ability to juggle technical, people, power, and unforeseen professional agendas.
• Our ability to memorize our experiences in useful mental models.

The world will end up having around 8 billion professionals, which means that more than 150,000 new professionals will enter the workforce every day for the next 75 years. This will dramatically change our professional context.

This book is for everyone who wants to sharpen their professional skills and mental models to stay relevant.