Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) by Scott Berkun Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly))
Book Review: Great for Project Managers - and Staff
Summary: 5 Stars
This gives some great insight, not only on how to do project management well but on how to manage people in general. I wish more of the managers I have worked with over the years had had this available.
If you are not a manager, but work in IT this is still worth your time. It gives a great look into just what project managers are dealing with, and how you can best help them succeed.
The concepts and advice are all things that I would want every team member to know well, with any team I was on. And it is all born out of hard work and excellent experience. This isn't a bunch of purely idealistic advice - it is grounded in reality.
Book Review: Great book!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read first edition of this book and Scott's other book - Myths of Innovation. Was very happy about both of them.
So when time came to recommend good book for my manager I had no doubt. After that he was screaming everywhere how this book is :)
Book Review: Practical, useful advice on how to realistically run a project
Summary: 5 Stars
Scott does a great job again in the new edition of this book of providing well-organized, practically useful guidance on how to work on and run a project. Even if you're not actually in charge of a project, I'd recommend this as a book to help you understand what should be getting done on it. The three biggest areas he focuses on are how to ensure a project has proper focus and clear priorities, how to run meetings and do feature-level design, and how to handle a project as it moves from start to finish.
The key to proper focus and clear priorities is the tie between the mission, goals, features, and tasks in a project. Scott provides a great framework for tying them together, ensuring they're created, and ensuring the team understands them.
The advice on running meetings and doing feature-level design is the only area that might not work as well for those outside of Microsoft. While I highly identify with it, and think that he's clearly stated the best practices for our environment, your mileage may vary.
Finally, he does a great job of talking about the difference between the start, middle, and end-game. Many people try to use a single process throughout and either overburden the start of the project or allow the end-game to spin wildly out of control. Scott's very clear about how to apply the right level of touch and raise the process bar at safe but necessary increments as a project goes on.
For this new addition, he addressed all of the negatives of the original - honestly, it's so good that if you have the first I recommend buying the second! I particularly enjoy the exercises, especially the reflective ones, as they help to cement all of the lessons I should've learned when I read the first version...
Book Review: A classic to put along other master pieces
Summary: 5 Stars
[...]
In these last days of vacations, I've managed to finish reading this really cool book on project management. Even though I'm not a project manager, this was one of those books I've heard lots of good things about and I can tell you now (after finishing reading it) that I wasn't disappointed with it.
Besides being fun and easy reading, you'll find lots of great tips on this book. For instance, I'll be using some of the ideas presented on the Skills and Management parts on my work from now on. If you ask me, I'd say that the last chapter (Powers and Politics) is more than enough for justifying the book's price!
Overall, I'm giving it 9/10 and I'm putting it on my special reference shelf, where I've already got Peopleware (ok, I've just noticed that I haven't publish a review on this book on my blog. I'll do it on the next days), The mythical man-month, etc. So, if you haven't read this book and you're on the development business, do yourself a favor and pick a copy and then read it from cover to cover! You should to be a better professional after reading it!
Book Review: Great foundation for new careers
Summary: 4 Stars
Making things happen fills one of the gaping holes in MBA education. I learned quite a bit through trial and error over several years post MBA but this book would have been a welcome addition to any of my courses. If you have any reservations about managing projects, working in and leading teams, or generally being effective, get this book, read it cover to cover, and put all the great tips and insights to work ASAP.