Breakthrough Technology Project Management

Rating:
Summary: 1 of the best for IT projects
Review: For project managers, the advice is solid but overpriced. For CIO's or Department Heads who can pick which projects to do, it provides much more information than standard project management books. The discussion of how to choose which projects to do, and then control them, provides solid advice on a topic generally not addressed. The audience for this material, however, is a much higher ranking and more limited audience than the material on individual project management. The project management material is reasonable, practical, and well presented, but nothing struck me as a breakthrough. Additionally, the book's price seems excessive for the advice provided, especially for a paperback. Technology project managers would be well advised to look at Information Systems Project Management by Hollows as an alternative. Project managers will find the book useful but can find cheaper books that present similar information. CIOs or Department Heads, who can pick what projects should be initiated, can get some uncommon advice and should also have the higher salaries that make it easier to take the book's price.

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Summary: Real help for project management
Review: I have applied methods in this book and a related seminar to a number of real projects and have gotten excellent results. I am not an IT person and was placed in charge of systems. The book helped me to plan and execute a huge IT project from scratch.I have 12 staff who were applications programmers of which 2 were analysts. I divided their tasks and attached them to users per the ideas in the book. The approach was applied to enhancements, new systems for tender evaluation and purchasing, and hardware. Per the methods of the book, all arising matters with management, vendors, and users were seen as issues and not as problems. By the team approach we were able to sack one person and reassign his roles. A 4 year project was finished in 2 years. Hardware and WAN were completed in two months. Right now we are planning a project to reach out to the remotest plantations that we own that is another 170 areas. We are using the book here as well. The key idea here is that the methods in this book are different and WORK.

Rating:
Summary: 1 of the best for IT projects
Review: If you go search on technology project management you find 140+ titles. Most of these do not address IT issues. This is one of the few that addresses IT projects specifically. It deals with all aspects of setting up, organizing, monitoring, tracking, and implementation. Specific problems and issues are addressed individually including how to avoid the problem, how to deal with the problem, and the impact. The authors have adopted an upbeat tone that stresses collaboration, the use of project templates, and lessons learned. These are key factors for success in IT projects from experience in over 40 major projects over a 15 year period. The book contains many useful guidelines for organizing the team, dealing with team member problems, management reporting, presentations of projects, how to establish the project plan quickly using templates, how to employ collaboration to define and update the work, how to do estimation and contingency planning, and how to address risk. There are chapters on dealing with specific issues. Rather than deal with fuzzy concepts, this book gets down to the nitty-gritty of doing a project. The book addresses how to allocation time between project and regular work--something that other books do not do. In addition, there is an emphasis on multiple rather single projects. In the world of IT there are very few instances where you deal with just one project. There are many interrelated projects. This is a well written, complete and innovative project management book. It is no wonder that it has been widely adopted.

Rating:
Summary: very thorough and complete guide to IT projects
Review: IT projects are very different from standard projects. This books provides an in-depth approach to managing IT projects. It has some very good specific tips regarding risk analysis, the management critical path (as opposed to the critical path), the use of score cards for project evaluation, how to deal with issues, and how to use lessons learned and experience to get continuous improvement in project management. In addition, the book focuses on templates rather than the traditional work breakdown structure-so it is gives greater flexibility. Another novel approach is use of the team members in participating in project management. Overall, very useful and informative.

Rating:
Summary: Very good
Review: This a very good book. It is written by two people that together have more than 40 years of experience in project management (PM) and provides with real and usefull examples.
I strongly recommend reading to people that already know PM. Its not a basic book in PM.

Rating:
Summary: more practical than what is out there
Review: This book gets right to the point. Excellent guide for project management of IT projects from actual case examples. If you want the theoretical, go to Hollings or other books. If you want the practical, go here.

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Summary: Breakthrough Tech PM a Must for High-Tech Systems PMs
Review: This book promotes the "how" not the "what" that you see in so many other PM books. I have read several other books over the past few months (Lewis', Keough's, etc.) They were helpful; however, Lientz & Rea's book was invaluable throughout our annual corporate planning process. It included helpful technology & business trending information, project management maturity within the organization, a structured approach for how to develop a project concept and getting it through management approval, what skills to look for in effective PMs, and much more. The most important information in the book, however, is the authors' understanding of inter- and intra-project dependencies within an organization. I was able to create a very good four-quarter systems' program plan based upon my learnings from this book. If you already have a good grasp of basic PM concepts and theory, but want more assistance with the "how's" or useful "best known methods," this book is for you. Please note that I am using the 1999 edition.

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Summary: A good book improved even more
Review: This book was already one of the more innovative and useful project management books for IT. Our organization has adopted the approach of the book with success in managing both IT projects, regular IT work, and engineering projects. We have over two years experience with the approach. The second edition adds substantial new material in budgeting, issues, multiple projects, dealing with risk, and evaluation of milestones. Milestone evaluation and QA/testing are addressed through selection of which milestones to evaluate based on risk and importance. This is a good approach because it forces people to determine what milestones to evaluate in detail early in planning and the project. The budgeting approach is also based upon managing risk. Estimation of tasks is based on determining what issues are behind specific tasks. This isolates uncertainty to specific tasks and eases the estimation effort. There is an innovative method for analyzing issues for multiple projects that we have put to use already. The issue analysis allows you to determine your approach to addressing specific issues that cross multiple projects. There are also additional guidelines for e-commerce as well. Overall, an excellent new edition.

Rating:
Summary: very thorough and complete guide to IT projects
Review: This is very good book on project management, i am a member of pmi, but in pmi u learn more about project management in general but this book is for IT guys, esply chapter on project management process is good, allso about tackling issues is well documented.