Breakthrough Technology Project Management, 2e

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Summary: Excellent book on project management
Review: About a month ago, I purchased several project management books to improve my knowledge of project management for use in IT projects. This was the most useful book of the bunch. It is directly relevant to IT projects which involve non-dedicated resources, short time frames, changing priorities, and management changes in direction. The book clearly addresses how to handle many IT project issues--going beyond technology and technical areas. The book was very easy to read and has been easy to use due to its structure and organization. I would hope that the book in a later edition expands on the number of IT issues that are addressed as it serves a real need in IT projects.

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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.

Rating:
Summary: Solid, but overpriced, advice
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: Modern project management dealing with resource allocation
Review: Having read the reviews of this book, I purchased it. While the reviewers comments are correct, they miss the major strength of the book. The key to managing today's projects is resource allocation across projects. This is the first book to really address this as the core issue of IT project management. This book will be valuable for any It group of significant size that has staff divided among support, development, and other activities.

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Summary: Contains many valuable suggestions on multiple projects
Review: I am a senior IT manager at a large midwestern insurance company. We recently completed all of our Year 2000 work and testing. We have over 70 programmmers and over 35 major systems. Each of these had to be reviewed and then modified. The challenge was how to manage the people working on Year 2000 maintenance as well as new development work. We started in 1996 with planning. A manager obtained this book in 1998. We had had many frustrating months trying to work out managing the programmers time across all of this work. The details of the book on multiple projects was very timely for us. We have employed it since we first started using the book at the end of 1998. The book identifies how to allocate staff time across multiple projects provided that these are set-up through the use of common rules using the project management software. We use Microsoft Project, Version 98, in a shared user environment so that the standardization mentioned in the book was followed. Another idea in the book is the process plan. The writers should go into this more. We developed our own model for key insurance processes as the Year 2000 work wound down. At the peak work, we had over 150 users working with Microsoft Project files.

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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.

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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.

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Summary: Modern approach to IT proj. mgmt. with a practical view
Review: IT projects are increasingly complex. A number of different models have been developed over the years including the CMM model. However, these do not fit many real world situations. What has been lacking are sources that address the real world issues that IT and business managers face. This book stands out from other project management books because it deals with maintenance, enhancement, development, and management of resources using modern tools. This is an important book because it contains so much useful information. The book also provides guidelines for measuring projects, presenting projects, and working with business managers on IT issues. We use it across our over 50 projects.

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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.

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Summary: Very useful and practical mgmt book on IT projects
Review: Many project management books deal with generalities and give directions that do not really fit IT projects. This book gives specific suggestions for development, software packages, operations and other IT activities. It deals with consoldating data across projects as well overall management of multiple projects. There are some very useful guidelines for each area.