Customer Reviews

97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts

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

 

 

As a novice project manager in a non-profit setting, I was very enthusiastic when I first heard about this book. The title and description sounded exactly like what I needed. Other books I've read on project management were targeted towards large-scale projects or missing the wisdom acquired from years of real-life experience.

This book, advertised as being short and practical lived up to some of its claims. According to the back of the book, it's for "software or non-IT projects", but covers the software side more thoroughly. Some of the tips were practical and immediately useful to me, while others pointed out problems in vague language without specifics for how to address them. It's the kind of book you can flip through to find what you need and disregard the rest, rather than reading it cover to cover.

The book is organized in a regular table of contents, or by topic. I found the topic listing more helpful and wish it had been listed first. I also wished there had been a glossary of project-management terms. Reading the book left me wondering who the experts were. Therefore, I would prefer to have the information about the authors listed earlier in the book or at the end of each article. Overall, a quick and mostly useful read.

This book is nothing but a collection of 2-page (or less) truisms. If you aren't already familiar with such profound notions as: "simplicity is easier than complexity", "good morale is more productive, bad morale is less productive", and "things are never perfect", then this book might be helpful.

There are many books that have been written on heavy-duty (heavy-handed?) Project Management Methodologies, or the particular buzzwords and methods one must repeat to become certified in these methodologies. But, where the rubber meets the road, there are particular issues of note and secrets of successful project leaders that are often omitted, or under-emphasized in global approaches to project management, software and product development. Barbee Davis who writes a semi-monthly column for the Project Management Institute Community Post, and O'Reilly Publishers have collected the most important tips, concerns and wisdom of many successful project managers from software and other industries and collected 97 of these pearls of wisdom, in two page summaries which impart the point of significance, and just enough direction to carry out this advice in a practical project management situation.

Pointed advice on particular approaches and tools, such as how to measure what is critical to the project's success, and how to efficiently use a wiki tool to organize a team's efforts, are often the details which are omitted or insufficiently specified in an overall Project Management Methodology. But these "how-to's" and "gotcha's" of Project Management, captured by real-life team leaders form the wisdom contained in this relatively compact volume.

In order that this wisdom is available in the situations you as a project team leader need the voice of experience, a second table of contents is included, listing each of these pearls in easily recognized categories such as Agile Methods, Managing People and Teams, Communications, Purchasing Issues, International Issues and Distributed Teams.

A new Project Manager would need several lifetimes of experience to acquire the wisdom of these established team leaders, and these pearls and sticking points are just the sort of issues omitted from many larger and more pretentious volumes on the project life cycle.

-_Ira Laefsky
MS Engineering, MBA, IT & HCI Consultant

The book is short which is good. However, it is not completely shallow. I do not think there is something to be learned.

I would recommend instead: the Mythical man-month, peopleware, and software estimation from McConnell (this last one is a long shot).

Readers will find important and helpful advices in different knowledge areas and processes of project management.
This book is a very good example of experience sharing.

Alper Aykaç

Software engineers and business project managers alike must have 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know, a powerful guide to everything from maintaining top coding quality to defining the conclusion of a project, spotting a good IT developer, and providing a valued, deliverable project. 97 short and practical tips apply to both software and non-IT projects and make this a solid pick for both computer and business lending libraries.

This is a terrific collection of small articles on many aspects of project management and successful team leadership. There are a large number of authors involved in this work, so the articles' voices vary, but each one is very well written and clear.

I loved Neal Ford's and James Graham's articles on productivity and finding good individuals, and William Mills' Meetings Don't Write Code certainly fit right in with my core philosophy.

The book's very easy to read and has a lot of valuable insight. Highly recommended!