Effective Project Management, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

~ Robert K.; Ph.D. Wysocki; Robert; Jr. Beck; David B. Crane (Author) "Change is constant!..." (more)
Key Phrases: contracted team members, project planning session, team operating rules, Project Overview Statement, Bloom's Taxonomy, Finalize the Schedule Based (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Master the project management skills you need to keep up in today's changing business environments.

Recommended by the Project Management Institute.

With over 80 percent of software projects deemed as failures, the demand for project managers who possess the necessary skills and competencies to succeed is on the rise! The second edition of this bestselling book describes how business environments are changing, how that affects the project manager, and what role project management plays in today's organizations.

Written by expert consultants in project management, this book/CD-ROM package uses a simulated real-world scenario to teach you the skills you need to keep your IT project on schedule, within budget, and according to specification. From staging and planning to implementation and completion, you'll learn what it takes to become a world-class project manager.

This book shows you how to:
* Determine the scope of a project
* Estimate the length of a project and determine resource requirements and cost
* Construct and analyze the project network diagram
* Finalize a schedule based on resource availability
* Recruit, organize, and manage a project team
* Monitor and control the progress of a project
* Close out a successful project

The CD-ROM contains interactive files that reinforce the principles and skills discussed in the book. The authors walk you through the book's example scenario and the decisions you would make as the project manager. When you feel you're ready to manage a project on your own, you can practice the skills you've learned with the bonus scenario. Adobe(r) Acrobat Reader Version 4.0 and Microsoft(r) Project98 120-Day Evaluation Edition are also included.

From the Back Cover

Master the project management skills you need to keep up in today's changing business environments.

Recommended by the Project Management Institute.

With over 80 percent of software projects deemed as failures, the demand for project managers who possess the necessary skills and competencies to succeed is on the rise! The second edition of this bestselling book describes how business environments are changing, how that affects the project manager, and what role project management plays in today's organizations.

Written by expert consultants in project management, this book/CD-ROM package uses a simulated real-world scenario to teach you the skills you need to keep your IT project on schedule, within budget, and according to specification. From staging and planning to implementation and completion, you'll learn what it takes to become a world-class project manager.

This book shows you how to:
* Determine the scope of a project
* Estimate the length of a project and determine resource requirements and cost
* Construct and analyze the project network diagram
* Finalize a schedule based on resource availability
* Recruit, organize, and manage a project team
* Monitor and control the progress of a project
* Close out a successful project

The CD-ROM contains interactive files that reinforce the principles and skills discussed in the book. The authors walk you through the book's example scenario and the decisions you would make as the project manager. When you feel you're ready to manage a project on your own, you can practice the skills you've learned with the bonus scenario. Adobe(r) Acrobat Reader Version 4.0 and Microsoft(r) Project98 120-Day Evaluation Edition are also included.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 2nd edition (March 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471360287
• ISBN-13: 978-0471360285
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #949,878 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good introductory book, March 21, 2002

By	"alquimista" (Tres Cantos, Madrid Spain) - See all my reviews

I purchased this book because I was looking for material to prepare the PMP certification exam. The book is easy to read and the concepts and key terms are clean and well explained. However, from my point of view, is too shallow to be fully "effective". I've been managing software projects for the last 6 years and, after reading the book, I felt that it didn't cover all my expectations, for example, treatment of Critical Chain Project Management is little more than a quote of its existence.

Anyway, if you are looking for an introductory book on PM I think is a pretty good book, but remember, to gain more in depth knowledge on particular subject matters you'll have to look at the references.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, yet succinct, August 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme, Third Edition (Paperback)

An excellent book on management of IT projects. The author discusses three different kinds of project management: Traditional, Adaptive and Extreme. The book is worth the purchase price for just the discussion on the Traditional project management method. The material about "Adaptive" and "Extreme" variations are icing on the cake.

What I like about this book is that the author effectively acknowledges the shortcomings of traditional project management and does not harp on its dogma. The material on adaptive project management offers a way out for those projects where the method of implementation is so unknown that traditional full-court project management practices will only hurt and not help. Much of the information on adaptive and extreme project management is similar to the "extreme programming" methodology, but specifically targeted towards a project manager.

I think this book is an excellent purchase. It is well written and succinct (unlike the 1000 pages of bullet-points from a competing author). Other reasons to purchase the book are its reasonable price and the fact that you get a trial version of Microsoft Project 2002 with it.

I wish the author had gone into greater depth about earned value. I have found earned value difficult to do without good support from the project management tool (calculating BCWS for example is tedious to do by hand); every time I tried to do earned value for a real project using MP98 or MP2000 the tool has crashed on me.

In summary I believe that this is an excellent book, and should be read by every project manager.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The third edition is excellent, August 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme, Third Edition (Paperback)

There is a complete PM education in this fairly compact book. The third edition touches upon non-traditional project management. In other words, project management in real life as opposed to what is in most every textbook.

To me the value of the third edition lies in Robert Wysocki's recognition of projects where either the goal is clear but the methods aren't, or where even the goal is unclear. These types of projects seem to predominate in IT. This book is worth purchasing for the insight that the authors bring into the non-traditional non-textbook real-life projects.

The prose is clearly written and reads very tightly. Contrast this to the random collection of thoughts in Kerzner's book. This book is written for the practitioner, though someone taking a college course in project management would also benefit.

Excellent book, at an excellent price. You can't go wrong.