Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management

by Johanna Rothman

This book is a reality-based guide for modern projects. You'll learn how to recognize your project's potholes and ruts, and determine the best way to fix problems - without causing more problems.

Your project can't fail. That's a lot of pressure on you, and yet you don't want to buy into any one specific process, methodology, or lifecycle.

Your project is different. It doesn't fit into those neat descriptions.

Manage It! will show you how to beg, borrow, and steal from the best methodologies to fit your particular project. It will help you find what works best for you and not for some mythological project that doesn't even exist.

Before you know it, your project will be on track and headed to a successful conclusion.

Genres: Management, Programming, Leadership, Business, Software, Reference, Technology

365 pages, Paperback

First published June 7, 2007

About the author

People know me as the “Pragmatic Manager.” I offer frank, practical advice for your challenging product development problems.

I help leaders and teams see their current reality. Because one size never fits all, we explore options for what and how to change. The results? Leaders and teams learn to collaborate and focus on outcomes that matter.

My clients and readers appreciate both my trademark practicality and humor. I've written 21 books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of blog posts. See all my writing and monthly newsletters at www.jrothman.com and www.createadaptablelife.com.

I write in all genres except for horror because I need my sleep, and horror gives me nightmares. My short fiction has appeared in Pulphouse Magazine, Fiction River, and Heart’s Kiss in addition to several other anthologies.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book on the pitfalls and difficulties of modern project management (mostly from an Agile perspective).

Johanna has a lot of good insight and perspective that comes from her vast experience. Some things she just glosses over but overall this book gave me a number of very good things to put into practice.

Very good book.

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is fantastic book! If you manage technical projects, you really should read this. It's full of great advice and great practices. I've directly applied many of the ideas to the projects that I am responsible for and they have really made a difference. As an example, scheduling has always been an issue at the company for which I work due to the need for a lot of developer time spent doing support tasks. Also, the previous project manager was really in love with MS Project and huge long Gantt charts. So most of the projects ended up going long and no one seemed to know why. I was able to apply the concepts of time-boxing and inch pebbles to scheduling. Now, we know when things are not on track and what that is. We also make better estimates because we are estimating smaller amounts of work with shorter windows. This is just one example of the many, many ideas and tips to be found throughout this book.

I can't recommend this book enough.

[David Lindelof · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an okayish book on project management but probably not the best one I've read. For one, the style of this book makes it more suitable for project managers with some prior management experience. Terms are used without being really defined (unless I missed them), and you clearly get the feeling that the author assumes you know already about different styles of software project management.

By all means read this book but only after you've had the chance to manage a couple of prior projects. Before that you might want to begin with another, lighter title on project management from the same publisher.

[Rasha Ashraf Ashraf · Rating 4 out of 5]

looks interesting !

[David Snook · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful compendium of advice that is clearly based upon experience, this book covers the full process of project management, from inception to completion. Along the way, it touches on nearly every software development buzzword (available circa 2006) like TDD (Test-Driven Development) and Scrum, but with some practical context as to when it makes sense to apply the particular buzzword and what to do if your particular constraints don't allow it.

[Christoph Kappel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this was the first management book I've read geared towards work in the field of IT. It combined many useful ideas from other iconic books like The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering and is packed with experience from war stories.

[Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this book. It is a pragmatic approach to project management with a lot of tips about how deal with certain situations. I specially like the chapter about avoiding the schedule game.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly thorough and focused on software project management rather than general project management, as so many PM books are. Great resource that I know I will go back to again and again.

[Vladimir Bushin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Manage It!" is one of my favorite books about agile. A good part of the book is devoted to communication challenges expressed in "schedule games". It is not a complete list of practices working with the executive management but they are definitely most common. I appreciate that the author highlighted the management issues and proposed solutions proven to be successful by years of practice.
There's also much value in discussing strategic aspects of agile. This book is a great guide to a well organized agile development in local or distributed teams.

[Larry Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for beginning or experienced project managers. It's not a PMP type of book, the emphasis here is on agile project management methodologies though there is some discussion of waterfall and others. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone doing project management, especially of software projects.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really useful and informative. Devastating analysis of serial status reporting meetings, and compelling arguments throughout. Not exactly a page-turner perhaps, but well worth the effort and highly recommended.

[Tomas Kejzlar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manage It! is my number one guide when it comes to agile project management. Johanna clearly and in a very coprherensive and entertaining way describes almost everything one may encounter while running agile projects. Especially the chapter regarding schedule games is a big help for me.

[Lachlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a handy book. There are some sections that I would have loved to had more detail - such as program management. Still, it's a good read.

[Pablo Fonseca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book to introduce or improve project management.

[Joao Cerdeira · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best book I had ever read about Project Management not related to any discipline in particular.

Very pragmatic approach to PM activities.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading for book, wouldn't recommend it unless you want to be a strong PM like me :) lol

[Christophe Addinquy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ma note de lecture complète en français ici

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is already a great guide through my career and will only become more valuable to me with time. I know it.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad at all, but also not super compelling

[André Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very easy to read, great illustrations, lots of good ideias for project managers.