Product Description

The Art of Project Management covers it all--from practical methods for making sure work gets done right and on time, to the mindset that can make you a great leader motivating your team to do their best. Reading this was like reading the blueprint for how the best projects are managed at Microsoft... I wish we always put these lessons into action!" --Joe Belfiore, General Manager, E-home Division, Microsoft Corporation

"Berkun has written a fast paced, jargon-free and witty guide to what he wisely refers to as the 'art' of project management. It's a great introduction to the discipline. Seasoned and new managers will benefit from Berkun's perspectives." --Joe Mirza, Director, CNET Networks (Cnet.com)

"Most books with the words 'project management' in the title are dry tomes. If that's what you are expecting to hear from Berkun's book, you will be pleasantly surprised. Sure, it's about project management. But it's also about creativity, situational problem-solving, and leadership. If you're a team member, project manager, or even a non-technical stakeholder, Scott offers dozens of practical tools and techniques you can use, and questions you can ask, to ensure your projects succeed." --Bill Bliss, Senior VP of product and customer experience, expedia.com

In The Art of Project Management, you'll learn from a veteran manager of software and web development how to plan, manage, and lead projects. This personal account of hard lessons learned over a decade of work in the industry distills complex concepts and challenges into practical nuggets of useful advice. Inspiring, funny, honest, and compelling, this is the book you and your team need to have within arms reach. It will serve you well with your current work, and on future projects to come.

Topics include:

• How to make things happen
• Making good decisions
• Specifications and requirements
• Ideas and what to do with them
• How not to annoy people
• Leadership and trust
• The truth about making dates
• What to do when things go wrong

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68151 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-21
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 392 pages

Review
"The book is written in an easy and witty style that makes for an enjoyable cover-to-cover read, although the structure of the book makes it easy to refer to particular sections as required. Whether you are an experienced project manager or making the transition from developer to manager, I thoroughly recommend that you read "The Art of Projects Management" and keep a copy with you at all the times!" - Jenny Smith, The Developers Magazine - Jan/Feb 2007

From the Inside Flap
"...Its strengths are its basis in experience; the inclusion of many illustrative stories; and the thoughtful sections on specs, making good decisions, and politics. ...I think it would be an excellent resource for someone going into project management or trying to make sense of project management."

- Kent Beck, Three Rivers Consulting, Inc. "The Art of Project Management covers it all - from practical methods for making sure work gets done right and on time, to the mindset that can make you a great leader motivating your team to do their best. Reading this was like reading the blueprint for how the best projects are managed at Microsoft. I wish we always put these lessons into action!" - Joe Belfiore, General Manager, E-home Division, Microsoft Corporation "Berkun has written a fast paced, jargon-free and witty guide to what he wisely refers to as the 'art' of project management. It's a great introduction to the discipline. Seasoned and new managers will benefit from Berkun's perspectives." - Joe Mirza, Director, CNET Networks (Cnet.com) "Most books with the words 'project management' in the title are dry tomes. If that's what you are expecting to hear from Berkun's book, you will be pleasantly surprised. Sure, it's about project management. But it's also about creativity, situational problem-solving, and leadership. If you're a team member, project manager, or even a non-technical stakeholder, Scott offers dozens of practical tools and techniques you can use, and questions you can ask, to ensure your projects succeed." - Bill Bliss, Senior VP of product and customer experience, expedia.com "Scott's manifesto on project management is a great balance of practical advice and inspiration, based on keen observations and experiences earned while in the trenches. It's well-researched, very readable, and humorous to boot." - Paolo Malabuyo, Lead Program Manager, Xbox, Microsoft Corporation " This book is useful to anyone involved in ongoing projects, regardless of whether they have an official leadership role. I'm a designer, not a project manager, and I found more practical information on how to get work done in a software company than any other book I've read." - Chad Thornton, Interaction Designer, Google A successful software application is a mixture of programming, designing, scheduling, marketing, testing, some black magic, and a lot of luck. Engineers see it as a technical problem; designers see it as a usability problem; marketers see it as a specifications problem; but nobody sees it as 100% their problem. This book is written for the people who take on the burden of making the whole problem their problem" - Steve Capps, CEO of onedoto.com and Former Apple fellow "How I managed so long without this book baffles the mind." - Richard Stoakley, Group Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation "As a software engineer, the observations in 'The Art of Project Management' resonated deeply with my own experiences. Scott's book gave me a new appreciation for the difficulty and risks, and the tremendous rewards of good project management. This book provides the knowledge and the incentive to become a better project contributor whether you are managing or being managed. Any stakeholder in a software project will benefit from reading this book." - Martin Frankel, Senior Software Engineer, TiVo Inc." Berkun provides valuable insight into how to accomplish projects without subscribing to a specific software engineering strategy. His discussions are supported with examples from projects he personally managed and include numerous citations from other works on philosophy, organizational behavior, and project management. This book should be required reading for anyone involved with development, from a single programmer in a small company to a vice-president of a large corporation. -Samuel Greenfield, Manager of System Development, Sports Illustrated Magazine "Of all the many books on project management, "The art of project management" is by far the most easy to read and entertaining. Scott Berkun's insights, knowledge and sense of humor delivers an exceptional book that no project manager can do without." - Michael Viola, Senior Consultant, IBM

About the Author
Scott Berkun worked for ten years at Microsoft Corporation on projects including Internet Explorer, MSN, and Microsoft Windows. He worked for two years in Microsoft's engineering excellence group, teaching and consulting with development teams. He currently works as an independent consultant in project management and product design, and runs the pmclinic, a friendly discussion forum on project management issues at www .scottberkun.com.

Customer Reviews

Project Management Experience Explainned
This is based on Scott's experience and it will give you good ideas, techniques and advices for project management. But if you're thinking in PMP book this isn't that kind of book.
I red it three times and each time I learn something new. I strongly recommend read this other book "Applied Software Project Management" from Theory In Practice O'Reilly series.

New, better, cheaper edition availalbe
I'm the author and wanted to make sure you were informed there is a new, updated edition of this book, and its now called Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management. It has been revised, polished, and enhanced, with 120+ new exercises, a discussion guide, improved footnotes, and much more.

Since the old edition listed on this page is out of print and hard to find, it's selling for twice the list price of the new edition, and, if you care, I get no royalties from used book purchases. If you really really want it for some reason, go for it, but I wanted to make sure you knew there's a better, and likely cheaper edition available.

Cheers and happy reading.

Good playbook for rookies.
I'm a rookie, so a playbook that organizes my thinking and allows me to execute the plays each day is perfect for what I need. I was surprised at how much of the role of project manager I do right now, and how much of the work is accessible if not desirable to me. The general feeling upon conclusion of the book is that I was just short of an epiphany in thinking, but it helped solidify my suspicions about project management:
-it is about getting things done through others;
-it requires a disciplined mind and organizational ability;
-it can be learned;
-it can be more rewarding than being an individual contributor.

Mr. Berkun has a lot of commercial software development background, so you'll need to map his model onto yours, but this isn't difficult. The processes for new projects are identical to maintenance work, only you have a smaller timeline and a more focused objective. Really, the ideas and practices scale very well.

Where I was put off, somewhat was in how the footnotes were organized, and how his anecdotes tended to end. Footnotes go at the bottom of the page or, much less ideally, at the end of the chapter. Putting them at the back of the book is the least helpful of the options. I'd have rather seen long parenthetical ramblings than a collection of now-contextless footnotes to read.

The anecdotes were illustrative, but lacked some kind of conclusion or resolution almost every time. "We had a problem, I discovered 'x', and we applied it." So how did it turn out? There's no reflection upon the efficacy of his examples in many cases, and it's an annoying method of storytelling.

Overall, I'm pleased that I found the book, and plan to use it in my expanded role at work. Once I develop some mastery of daily/ weekly/ monthly planning and execution, I'm sure I'll be able to move onto more advanced study, but I'm not ready, and this book is clearly for rookies with some self-awareness.

-C