Customer Reviews

Project Management: A Managerial Approach

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This book makes learning Project management difficult. It does not clearly define anything. It is full of endless (and senseless) babble and author's "opinions" very few facts. I fully believe this is a required text because of the website Wiley created and the "bonus" cd of Project 2002. The website makes teaching the class a breeze, it gives the teacher quizzes and tests, therefore, the teacher doesn't have to muddle through the maze of crap to find out information. The quizzes are not general but tipically, "what message did the author's try to convey on page such and such".

This book is not worth it!

I bought this book because it was required for a class I am taking. I had the 3rd Edition already and wasn't too impressed. But this 5th Edition is much more appealing. I just became PMP certified and reviewing this book before taking the exam was a great primer to get my head out of pure PMBOK and into real world Project Management. The case studies and Directed Readings are great for seeing real world PM activities. I would suggest the book for guidance and classroom type learning. If you're an experienced PM then this book is too academic and won't feed your intellect. Buy something else.

Okay so we all know that PM books can be pretty dry and boring, but wow is this text a snoozer. The case studies are excellent, but general concepts are muddled between the author's opinions, babble, and history lessons.

If you are looking for concepts, facts, examples, and down to earth solutions to common problems, then look elsewhere. Wayyyyy too much babble. I wouldn't use this text for the PMP exam. If youre a "get to the point" kinda guy...this text will continually annoy you.

For the academic classroom its okay only, but get ready to explain concepts and shorten the history lesson. Nice Dilbert inserts, MS Project explainations, and earned value analysis though. :)

Leave this book in the academic community. Ignore it in the real world PM office.
This book puts greater emphasis on academic PM babble than it does on real world project management necessities. As such, the book de-emphasises many important points that are necessary to run a project in the real world.
The critical path method in this book suffers from an -off by one- error. Check the PMBOK (2000) for verification.
The authors made many references to the work of others which made the book twice as long as it could have been. No one had time to read any of the references that appeared to be interesting with hope of finding actual usable and valuable information.
There was only passing references of risk, the importance of communication, personalities, and schedule disruption. There was nothing on these subjects that would assist a PM in the real world.
Disappointingly, this book only used 1/3 of a chapter for Earned Value. It put minimal emphasis on EV other than to provide the equations. EV is very important in the PM world.

The chapter on Project Termination was good. - The rest of the book was disappointing.

This book should be used for academic PM introductory purposes only.

Sorry for the disappoint review but I was disappointed.

The book provides good insight into project management. Suitable for beginning or intermediate level. A few of the concepts and readings are quite out of date. The third edition was last copyrighted in 1995. This can be an eternity in the fast changing project management arena. An update, to include current (1999) concepts and techniques, could make this an excellent text instead of a good text.

This is an outstanding book. Whether you are new to project management or and old-hand, this book covers many topics in a business like and mature fashion.

I especially recommned it to IT project managers, precisley because it ISNT focused on IT. It is very informative to see how project management is carried out in other industries.

This book cant help but broaden your appreciation of this vitally important aspect of management.

I can not believe that PMI recommened this book for preparing for the PMP exam. It is not worth the money unless you know absoultely nothing about PM.

we used this book in our undergraduate SE project management classes to prepare students to run their senior year project.
the results were great.

this book has just enough explanation of practical techniques, without going into the history and theory of management like the really thick books we use in the graduate courses.

this book covers all the management topics a student or working SE would need to successfully run a project. just add experience and common sense and stir:)

we let the students make their mistakes in their junior year class project while learning pm at the same time. they gain a good appreciation for what the book was telling them to do when they see the problems they had when they ignored (or didnt understand) what they should have done for planning and running a project.

if you are a professional manager, executive, or going for a PMP cert then you will need to follow up with something more detailed. But for initially learning pm andor understanding it this book is excellent.

you dont need to do a project if you read the book and do the exercises/questions. but usign the material on a real project does a great job of reinforcing the need for good pm.

I wish that i had had somethign like this to read when i was starting out. it helps the technical folks understand what management is doing and why, which will help how they interact and will result in a better SE efforts for the overall project.

this is a good introductory book for self study as well as a good textbook. it is worth getting.

It's so funny as I think back over my project management degree program. Several of my classmates and I went through the classes together and spent a lot of that two years saying things like, "You remember, in Meredith and Mantel, they said ..." This is one of the text books I think we all kept for our professional libraries.

Great overviews and then getting down to the nitty gritty of project management. Even if you aren't using this for a course, I would think this would be a good reference for any project managers. I couldn't possibly sell this book because it's too full of notes and highlights. I refer to it again and again.

I read all the book. I found some parts of it interesting, however, some of the tools where only mentioned but where not explained (except for citations for further reading). I am a begginer at project management and I would like more simple written ideas and processes, as far as clarification is concerned.

The transition from theory to practice is not quite clear and some things of the theory are not clarified enough (eg project charter, WBS etc.)

Finally, the language was a little more difficult that I would expect, as I am a foreign reader and my first language isn't English.