Customer Reviews

Just Enough Project Management: The Indispensable Four-step Process for Managing Any Project, Better, Faster, Cheaper

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is about right for a new project manager or a small project (hopefully these would both go together but so often it does not). It is also quite useful for an experienced project manager of a smaller project looking for that line that separates the least amount of control from sheer negligence. This book is a little heavier than that, but still pretty light.

It is not quite as useful as the Dummies series in terms of a full service solution but really, despite the titles, those are not for novices. This book has a reasonable enough approach and reasonable enough templates to implement it.

The drawback I found was that the author uses relatively trivial illustrative "projects" so that newbie can understand the principles without getting hung up on details. The problem is even as a trained project manager the examples of PM applied to such simple things as "weekend at the country cabin" projected precisely the image of absurd over-control that is the thing that frightens PM opponents in the first place. For a real newbie, it could even more scary because if that is what you have to do for something so obviously simple, how much overhead goes with a real project?

That is really a minor quibble, though. If you are introducing a novice to the idea of PM, or if you are introducing PM to a nervous organization, this book might be a good place to start as a base case. It is certainly about the closest thing I have found in the past months of looking for such a solution.

I was looking for a good basic book to recommend to some PM-phobic coworkers and found the Idiot's and Dummie's editions rather pale and useless.

I especially appreciate Cook's emphasis on using just the right amount of PM and not letting the PM process overwhelm the actual work!

This book was exactly what I was looking for. Not too PMBOK-heavy and not too dimwit-light.

The book holds its promises. It gives a brief discussion on some essential components of project management. Ideal for everybody who wants to get a quick start in project management.

This book quickly plugged some of the holes in my understanding of project management. It also made the PM discipline more accessible and scalable for smaller projects. And there are a lot of small projects.

My team was looking for a resource to help us expand our knowledge of project management. We have an online certification available but after previewing a few of the classes, we knew we wanted something easy. This book is the perfect quick and dirty synopsis of managing a project. It's all here, organized well and easy to reference. The group liked it so much, we bought on for everyone in the leadership class at our organization.