Excellent book. My main complaint, if you can call it that, was that as an overview, it could only give a taste of the topics covered. Fortunately, Berkun sprinkled follow-up references liberally throughout.

This book focuses on the essence of project management: allowing a group of people to work together to accomplish some goal. It's not tied to any particular technique or methodology. Because it's so general, some individual ideas and recommendations come across as common sense. The value comes from how the ideas support each other. E.g., the notion that schedules are highly uncertain at the beginning and become more certain over time is common sense, but when that is combined with approaches for developing specifications or making decisions or managing risk, it becomes a powerful foundation for running a project.

I don't know how useful this book would be for someone trained as a project manager, but for someone like myself, who has had to pick up project management because someone has to do it, it's a great transition from intuition to a reasoned approach. ( )

Good book covering the common difficulties of project management. Fantastic introduction to the profession with an emphasis on software development but can easily be applied to other projects. Discusses scheduling, smart planning, documentation, idea generation and management, decision-making, communication, relationship-building, strategy and other topics. Would recommend for those who want to get a good idea of some common problems and solutions of project management. ( )

I didn't realize this was about managing software development when I checked it out (although I probably should have, given what was next to it on the shelf). Even though it's not completely compatible with what I do, I was engaged enough by the author's down-to-earth tone and humorous take on his own management experiences that I ended up reading the whole thing (I will admit to skipping the sections that were heavily focused on the software development process).

The book was very well organized. It's divided into three primary sections: making plans, useful skills, and management techniques. I found the chapters in the skills section about decision making, workplace communication, and how not to annoy people to be especially helpful. The combination of easy-to-skim headings, useful lists and figures, and engaging teaching stories made this a fun read.

The only real complaint I have is that some of the pages on my copy are already starting to fall out. Granted, it's a library copy, but it doesn't seem heavily used, so if you're considering buying a personal copy you might want to see if you can find an electronic version. ( )

Scott Berkun's updated a revised edition of his already superb book about project management.

I love it for it's straight to the point approach to project management and low on high brow theories that sometimes plagues these kind of books. ( )