Clark A. Campbell, author of a best-selling book on project management, has written a project management guide specifically for IT professionals who want to save time and work more efficiently. The One Page Project Manager for IT and Manage Any Project With A Single Sheet of Paper presents you with a winning formula for managing your complex IT projects using minimal resources. Coverage of vital topics like working with outside consultants, ERP project management, and ISO 9000 will be of special interest to IT managers and CIOs.
Good, but I should have read the first one, well, first. And the templates aren't downloadable in Excel format as they imply in body of the book. Other than that, it feels like a good way to present project updates.
This has been an unbelievably valuable resource for me. I have read it twice and it sits on my desk where I continue to peruse its pages. How do I report the status of projects to executive management in a concise and easy manner? Better yet, how can I report in a way that conveys a clear picture of the "real" status without reams of paper or long tedious meetings. A project's "status" can be a complicated thing. It may be overall on track, on budget, or even ahead of schedule, etc. But there are always some areas that need focus, or increased risks, scope issues, etc. It can be a difficult thing to give an accurate assessment of a large project's "status" because there is so much involved.
Clark Campbell has the answer with the one-page project manager, or OPPM. Clark walks through step-by-step instructions to create the OPPM using an Excel spreadsheet. He has a web site with the book's template along with many other examples from real projects at O.C. Tanner where he is a Senior VP. The site also contains downloads from other users in a variety of disciplines not necessarily IT, and from all over the world.
It really works and it can really be used for large projects. Really.
It does not eliminate the need for other project management and tracking tools such as MS Project, nor does it eliminate the need for stakeholders and participants to stay actively involved; but it provides a one-stop-shopping "dashboard" where anyone involved in the project can see exactly what's working and what is not.
The One Page Project Manager (OPPM) is a perfectly reasonable book, but it really isn't about managing projects, it's about reporting the status of projects to senior management. In this respect, the OPPM seems like a perfectly reasonable tool for what is designed to do. It was an easy read and ideal for taking as a travel book on a business trip.
I did have a couple annoyances about the book. First, the book repeatedly mentions downloading the OPPM files and examples from their website, onepageprojectmanager.com, but upon getting there they want you to pay more to download the OPPM Excel file. From my perspective, I paid for the book, the files should be free. If nothing else they could have secret download keys like Manning does with their books. Also, there should also be non-Microsoft versions too, such as Google Docs.
Also, when reading the book the images of the OPPM spreadsheets they describe are often very difficult to read. Their solution is to download the examples from the website, so obviously they are aware of the problem. My solution is print bigger pictures of the spreadsheets.
Overall a decent book to describe the OPPM approach to reporting and aggregating project status to senior management. I think it looks like a worthwhile tool for what it is designed for and generating the report will make the PM understand their project better, but not a tool for managing the projects themselves.
Campbell proposes a "standard" one-page project status document that is used across all projects for all reporting. In essence, a good idea; in practise, maybe not so good.
There are several examples given in the book, virtually no two of them alike - each was customised to the particular example, losing the advantage of standardisation.
The template itself is both too detailed (far, far too much information on one page - one particular example would need an A0 plotter to be usable on one page) and not relevant enough (information that is relevant only at an overall project governance level is being dealt with in a progress report).
The concept itself is simple, and is portrayed in about a dozen pages, leaving the rest of the book as basically an awful lot of waffle and padding - generic PM stuff about building a team, instructions how to read the report, numerous examples which read more as an advert for the author's employer than useful case studies, and generally a very verbose attempt to pad out this slim, large-print book to justify this being a separate entity from his previous OPPM book.
All in all, hugely unimpressed - nice concept but poor execution.
I bought this book based purely on the enjoyment and success I had with reading the first book. The contents of this book can be condensed in just one chapter - which should've been included in the first publication - there was no need to create a separate book just for IT projects. With the first book providing the foundation and sound principles, adapting the OPPM for IT projects doesn't need an altogether new book. Most of the chapters can be considered as waffle - although the author does try to provide some insight into project management activities - but these are well known and covered in other books. As a tool though, the example projects are still great and useful...it is definitely not worth every penny I'm afraid. OPPM is still a great tool, I encourage people to use it - but the book itself was probably just a way to make more money...when it really could have been an extra chapter in the first OPPM...
Despite being a short book, I have been reading this one for a while. I finally finished it this week. Along with introducing a valuable tool in the One Page Project Manager, this book includes some great anecdotes and quotes about managing projects. I highly recommend this to IT professionals.
How to summarize the status, deliverables, responsible, and other details of the project execution in a single sheet. Interesting and practical, but no big deal. Especially good for audiences with little time - and patience.
could have been so much better. A lot of talk about projects that the author worked on but without tying that experience very much with OPPM. I wish he spent more time focusing on OPPM.