12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Useful Guide to PM Excellence, March 24, 2009
This review is from: Alpha Project Managers: What the Top 2% Know That Everyone Else Does Not (Hardcover)
After using his super PMP study guide some time back, I picked up Andy Crowe's `Alpha Project Managers,' published in 2006.
This has to be one of the most under produced books I've ever seen. Crowe essentially self-published on his own Velociteach label. It shows. The graphics are third rate and the cover is pretty bad.
But no matter. The information inside is fascinating. Crowe surveyed over 3,000 project managers and their co-workers/supervisors in order to identify the "top 2%" of project managers ("alpha project managers"). He tried to identify PMs who were consistently rated as excellent by the people they worked with and their customers. Once he found them, he zeroed in on their work habits and PM techniques.
Some of the interesting findings:
# Alphas respond to fewer emails/day and spend less time in meetings than non-alphas, yet people rated them as being more responsive than non-alphas.
# Alphas establish explicit communication expectations, and adhere to them stringently.
# Alphas sent much shorter communications than their non-alpha peers.
# Alphas spent twice as much time in the planning phase of their projects than did non-alphas.
# Alphas used informal networks to get things done much more often than non-alphas (who stuck to formal channels).
# Alphas were much more aware or how their bosses were being measured (ROI, etc.) than non-alphas.
Each of these points (and others) are supported with some useful anecdotes from the PMs themselves. Crowe does a good job trying to help PMs understand these habits and apply them to their own work. This is a text which deserves wider recognition and higher quality production in a second edition.
Recommended. 197pp.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting read, January 27, 2008
This review is from: Alpha Project Managers: What the Top 2% Know That Everyone Else Does Not (Hardcover)
I don't think this book on its own is going to help anybody become an Alpha project manager, but it is interesting and gives you some ideas to start with. This is a non-scientific study, and in a few places you can tell, but for the most part it was well researched and the extrapolations are pretty convincing. It's not an overly long book, so you don't need to invest several weeks of free time to get the major learnings out of it. Recommended for project managers or people who want to be project managers.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not insightful, November 7, 2010
This review is from: Alpha Project Managers: What the Top 2% Know That Everyone Else Does Not (Hardcover)
Firstly the book is very short as I managed to read the entire book in less than two hours. Putting that aside, I found the book lacking in real insight as to what types of PMs succeed in managing projects. Also, I believe the research is flawed as the author chose the sample of PMs based on views from Senior Managers. I believe that hard data needs to be used as a basis of selecting PMs that are successful and not what Senior Managers believe. A lot of what's written on why some PMs are more successful than others is just basic common sense. An example is the facets of communication resulting in greater success. Project Management entails constant communication therefore it's obvious that PMs that communicate better will inevitably produce better results than those that don't. Overall, the book didn't leave me all that impressed.
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