The Principles of Project Management 125
zedguy writes "Ask someone what 'project management' is and you're liable to get a few blank stares — it's one of those fields people have heard of, but probably have problems pinning down a definition. So that is what the first section of the book does: provides a definition that can be summed up as applying tools and skills to complete a project. That then leads to what exactly is a "project": a set of tasks with a time-frame and goal of somehow adding value. So yes, the introduction does involve a fair bit of terminology that isn't going to be familiar to many readers coming from a coder's background, but there's a helpful appendix that lays out many of the terms. Just as important, the introduction explains what project management is not, some of the misconceptions and why it's good to know." Keep reading for the rest of Zoltan's review.
With the definitions out of the way, readers then get into the start-up tasks. First, there's looking for projects (find opportunities), deciding is it's a good opportunity (this is a bit of office politics — you want to know soon if the your project has the necessary support from management) and even if the task warrants a project — one of the key points is that a project is not on-going maintenance — it has a goal and a completion date.| The Principles of Project Management | |
| author | Meri Williams |
| pages | 204 |
| publisher | SitePoint / O'Reilly |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | Zoltan Hunt |
| ISBN | 0-9802858-6-0 |
| summary | A practical introduction to project management |
Once you have decided to undertake a project, the next steps involve a proposal, identifying stakeholders, setting up an organizational chart and establishing communication protocols. This is the soft skill side of project management — a lot of the work is keeping the people the project is for interested and informed on where the project is heading. Much of the advice is practical — including dealing with the stakeholders who just aren't that interested in your project and picking a good project board — the less the better. Finally, once this is established it's time to make sure everyone is on the same page and agreed on the deliverables (the specific things the project will achieve).
By chapter three ("Getting the Job Done") we're into the actual material many readers (including myself) think of as project management — setting schedules, breaking deliverables into discrete tasks. For that, there's a lot of practical advice here — especially around making estimates and communicating them to stakeholders and team-members so they are not mis-interpreted as wild guesses or hard dates. Particularly good was the advice on refining estimates from a general size (is it a small, large or extra-large task), then, as the date got closer, change it to a more accurate estimate. As well as measuring performance, some management tools like work-flow and Gantt charts and issue lists are introduced in this chapter.
The last two chapters look at managing your team and completing the project. The "Keeping it smooth" chapter gives a good overview of the people management skills you will need working with team members. There's a fair bit of overage of team building (forming, storming, performing and adjourning) and a bit of coverage of collaboration over distances. Having done some small group management in the past, I think it covers all the bases well and it's applicable outside of project management as well.
Like many of the new SitePoint books this book explains a complex topic with a few illustrations and a clean layout. They're using that humorous information schema (light-bulb, bicycle horn, hand grenade) to good effect. One example of this is in Getting Started chapter: There is a section talking about what goes in a Project Initiation Document (PID), and there are break-out boxes on what it is not meant to take the place of.
For an example of the layout, the "Keeping it Smooth" chapter is a good example of how this book is organized; Topics are broken up by headings with points arranged as lists of short paragraphs, which makes it easy to skim. While it's a small book — 200 pages, about 25x20 cm — it's still good to be able to skim.
The glossary covers the particular usage of words in the project management domain.
Appendixes A-C list some tools,other resources (books and blogs) and C provides a list of qualifications and associations.
For a topic I was quite unfamiliar with when I started, I'd recommend this book as a good overview to the topic. The chapters follow a chronological order through a project — from picking a project — including those to avoid — planning and executing, managing the staff and stakeholders and finally, finishing your project and handing it off.
The author, Meri Williams, writes two blogs: GeekManager and Meriblog which readers might want to check out for further material. While each field has it's jargon, project management has a number to learn — and this book does a good job explain it.
You can purchase The Principles of Project Management from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Is this (Score:3, Interesting)
like the Cliffs Notes for the PMBOK [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Project Management is..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Duh. You get them to get it on with one another. Live porn!
Though it might be more productive to teach them to code. If I had a team of nine babes who could take over low level coding while I focussed on high level design, that would be sweet.
Re:I bought Microsoft Project a while back (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, they want software development to be like engineering. And it's not. Software development is still in its early stages. It's a craft. It's moving towards being engineering, but it's not there yet. About 1.5-2 engineering generations away. still.
The difference between a craft and engineering? The processes and tools. Ask two engineers to design a bridge or plane. They will use very similar tools, almost guaranteed they'll use the methods and math. They will produce almost exactly the same result (with maybe some superficial differences)
Ask two programmers to produce something and it's not even sure they'll use the same language or platform. Let alone methods and math. They may probably understand very little of their customers business or needs.
I assure you, aerospace engineers know *way* more about aircraft than their customers.
Do software developers know way more about accounting than their customers? Or way more about writing? Or way more about graphics? Probably not.
So, we're still early days of SW development. It's still a craft. My impression is that the generation of programmers coming out of school today will teach the first generation of actual software engineers.
And just like with every other craft that moved to engineering, there will still be a small market for handcrafted stuff. Very specialized or just plain artistic. And enthusiasts. You can see this move now when you see "old timers" talk about "back in the day, we wrote in assembly and by God we were happy to have 16k."
The automobile went through this. Airplanes did too. So did trains. It's the normal progression of technology.
So project managing SW development is like trying to project manage craftsman. Very light touch and spend most of your time fronting between the craftsman and the customer. Schedules are very sketchy estimates. A good PM actually understands the craft enough to be able to understand what's going on with minimal explanation from the craftsman. An excellent one also understands the customer well. Otherwise, you're just annoying the craftsman and lying to the customer. :)