On the web I came across this page on the History of Project Management on the web site lessons-from-history.com. Most histories of project management are pathetic, this is more substantial. The page and associated pages come from a forthcoming book on The History of Project Management.
The Latin word projectum means, “to throw something forwards.” The word “project” originally meant “something that comes before anything else is done”. When the word was initially adopted, it referred to a plan of something, not to the act of actually carrying this plan out. Something performed in accordance with a project was called an object. This use of “project” changed in the 1950s when several techniques for project management were introduced: with this advent the word slightly changed meaning to cover both projects and objects. However in certain projects there may still exist so called objects and object leaders, reflecting the older use of the words.
As an alternative view, you might try What Monty Python Taught Me About the Software Industry which applies selected key gems of Python wisdom (like “I’m not dead”) to the software development process.