Customer Reviews

Managing Multiple Projects

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have the Job from Hell - I'm responsible for production scheduling at a busy graphics pre-press house. All day long I make commitments to customers and then turn around and try to get my work group to deliver on them. Before I read "Managing Multiple Projects" I felt completely overwhelmed by my responsibilities. Now I believe there's hope.

Chapter 2, "The Cheeseburger Paradox", really spells out the problem. "It's great to aim high, to attempt to do more and do it better. But unless you can do that reliably, unless your customers can depend on you, you've got problems... the high-value-added operation cannot afford to deliver inferior service." The rest of the chapter - and the book - offers tools and techniques for achieving reliability.

This book really helped me see where the systems I use are letting me down and how I can change that. I've read books on time management. I've struggled to make Microsoft Projects work for me, but nothing's clicked like the advice I've read in "Managing Multiple Projects". Anyone who's tried other books on time and project management and felt unsatisfied ought to give this book a try. The authors' combination of systems engineering perspective and psychological insight into stress and group process sets this book apart. I happen to think it is groundbreaking work.

It's not really an exaggeration to say that any manager could learn from this book. It's unfortunate that many people who would benefit most from this book might not even realize how much they need it....

The title seems to suggest that this book is about project management, but since the authors define "project" as "a commitment of time and resources aimed at a specific outcome," the book is really much more comprehensive.

It's about managing lots of things effectively as the same time.

So, it's about managing time, formalizing processes, dealing with emotional demands, avoiding the dangers of setting priorities, compartmentalizing, tracking projects, and making changes in systems.

Just try to find another book that covers all those areas! This book covers them - and the tone and style make it easy to read. (It's interesting what can happen when a systems engineer and a psychologist team up to write a book!)

How much time do you lose trying to juggle tasks and the people responsible for them? How much is that time worth? It's probably far more than the price of this book. Do you want to manage more effectively and more easily? If so and you're serious about it, this book would be a great investment.

My life is a constant balancing act of work, family, community and friends. I've been a manager for 20 years, so I've seen a lot. Typically I look for one or two good ideas in a book. But this excellent book, clearly written, is full of personal management and project management advice. It has really helped me simplify and get organized.

The Cheeseburger Paradox opened my eyes to our quality problems from a completely new perspective. The chapters on time management and scheduling are fresh and present new ideas that I can put to work immeadiately.

My other project management books sit on a shelf collecting dust, being either too detailed or esoteric for day-to-day use. This is one that I carry around with me, loving marked with post-it notes, so I can show people, "See, this is what I mean."

Being a successful manager , and being an avid reader, I was expecting this book to go a bit further than it did. I have read a number of project management books, and a number of management books, and I would have to say that this book is at best a rudimentary management book. If you are completely new to management then maybe this book would be useful. If you are an existing manager and are looking for practical advice on how to manage, track, and report on multiple projects, this book is not for you.

THe book's precepts that reliability and consistency equal success and it's the formula that makes success is one right out of the CMM manual and a staple at Management Consultant firms.

Unfortunately this book falls short of how to get there, other than some warm over Stephan Covey planner tips. Good for skimming but not much meat.

Irene and Michael Tobis have written an essential book for managers who run numerous small projects or complex combinations of large and small projects with multiple employees who have varying skill levels. If the process you manage hasn't been automated to the point of being an assembly line, you need this book, especially if you are responsible for team production and output. We recommend it as a fundamental part of any business management curriculum and as a training tool for new managers. Others who would benefit from it include teachers, project leaders, volunteer organization presidents and committee heads who orchestrate complex tasks. The authors provide principles, definitions and techniques that you can apply to your specific situation. Anyone who feels overwhelmed or overloaded will benefit, in particular, from chapters five and six, which focus on identifying everything you have committed to and developing a plan both to get out from under the overload and to manage future commitments more gracefully. Go get your copy.

This is an excellent book with lots of practical knowledge having to deal with juggling multiple projects. As a former Director of both IT and Education in Silicon Valley, I found it to be concise and practical.

I am a fan of all the books I have read in the Briefcase Series. They have a very direct, no nonsense approach that is very appealing to busy people. I have picked up many useful ideas from many of the books form this series.

One of the difficulties of a middle level mangement position is juggling multiple projects. This book gives very useful and practical advice along these lines.

For a project manager using large scale software tools this will fall very short despite the title. An opt title might have been, Time and Project management for small teams. The book starts with brief time management concepts, as it relates to individuals, then proceeds to some pretty good general team buiding points and interviews to answer questions related to time and projects, but finally leaves the reader (like a seasoned PM) pretty much wondering where its all going with 80-pages left to read.

If you operate in small teams or workgroups and just starting out in a PM role, when the role did not exist before, then this may cut it. If you are expected to apply PM principles, as outlined in the PMBOK or even moving to job where the previous person did a similar role without the PMI designation, then forget this one.

I gave it two stars because it does have some management pointers that was good to re-read after many years.

This book goes for a $1-$3 in the used section, so its not like your gonna get ripped off or anything like that, its just a question of what your time is worth and maybe being caught with this on your desk at work. I mean if your a seasoned PM and your boss flipped through its pages, you would have to quickly come up with a think-fast answer, or he would seriously question your abilities.

Got this for extra reading on a project management course. Has some good stuff.

The authors posit that unreliable brilliance will always lose to reliable adequacy. It is noble to aim for greatness, but unless you can deliver reliability consistently, you are creating problems for yourself and your organization.

They, one a PhD psychologist and the other a PhD systems engineer, jointly operate a consulting firm that seeks to find individualized paths to productivity that can be sustainable, convenient, natural and delightful.

To them, reliability has a simple definition. The reliable worker or workgroup finishes every work item in a reasonable amount of time and with reasonable quality. Many who are capable of brilliance are capable of reliability, but often it does not come easy. Being competent means you can complete the job.

Being reliable means you can complete the job every time. Unless your customers can depend on you, regardless of the project's complexity, you have problems. The high value, high-complexity organization cannot afford to deliver inferior service.

The book combines skills from time management, task completion and organizational psychology. It offers jargon-free definitions of important terms; tips and tactics for facilitating multiple projects; practical advice to minimize project errors and warning signs new activities are headed awry.

The authors provide simple, proactive strategies for consistently achieving multiple objectives