Customer Reviews

Managing Multimedia: Project Management for Interactive Media (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

I am a student studying Bachelor of Multimedia and I found this book to be extremely helpful in my course - especially when it came to managing and conducting my student projects at university (with real life clients, external to the uni).

This book teaches you how to effectively elicit the product requirements from your client; it gives information on contractual issues for proposals and development agreements; it advises how to assemble the most effective team for a project and team management principles; it discusses Intellectual Property and Copyright, important issues for this industry; it covers management of the other phases of a multimedia project - design, production, integration and testing... and gives advice so you don't fall in the traps that so many other projects have like requirements creep, blowing the budget, missing the deadline...

You really need to plan your multimedia projects if you want to create quality products (whether is be a web site or CD-ROM) - and this book will help you plan and control your projects.

Project management is -big- money. If you want a book about how to be a professional multimedia project manager, then this book is for you.

The book does not reflect real life multimedia project planning.

The authors spend too much time on overly complex forms and proceedures. I wonder if they ever worked with an in-house client or a small business wanting multimedia development. I doubt it.

If you are working on a very complex project with really stupid clients this might be the book for you.

If enjoy working with multimedia and you are working with the average clients, who want a web site or interactive CDROM, I'd advise you look for a different book.

I'm currently teaching a multimedia project planning course. A former instructor recommended we use this book. My students and I have recommended that we don't use this book for future courses.

The book contains a CDROM which is pretty much extra fluff with no real value.

I teach Multimedia Project Management in a Multimedia Design Masters Program at Laval University, Quebec City, Canada.

For the two years which I gave the course, I have used Managing Multimedia as the main reference.

I was pleased to discover the book. Students also find the book very relevant.

This book provides an excellent overview into project management of multimedia projects. It covers such topics as general project management strategy, scoping a project, contractual issues, selecting the team, team management, agreeing the content, copyright, and marketing, in each case relating the discussion directly to the special issues that arise in multimedia management. The book also provides an introduction to technical topics such as interface design, audio assets, video assets, graphical assets, and testing. The accompanying CD-ROM is well-done, containing useful supplemental material such as interactive forms for various stages of project management that can be used as is or edited.

One of the book's authors obviously has a strong connection to audio production, and the chapter on audio assets gives a very in-depth introduction into what kinds of things an audio engineer is capable of doing and is supposed to do. I have been looking for a general introduction to sound editing, and this is the best that I have been able to find so far, but I didn't expect to find it in a book about general multimedia management. The accompanying CD also contains audio samples for listening and editing practice, as noted in the book. I found these samples also quite useful.

We used this book as textbook for a European course in Multimedia Production: it is clear, up to date and doesn't containt he usual geeky jargon. Written by people who know about production, and how to pass on that knowledge to others. Good practical exercises too.