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Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme
With 200 pages of new content, the fifth edition of this popular guide gives new or veteran project managers a comprehensive overview of all of the best-of-breed project management approaches and tools today, including Traditional (Linear and Incremental), Agile (Iterative and Adaptive), and Extreme. Step-by-step instruction and practical case studies show you how to use these tools effectively to achieve better outcomes of projects at hand. Plus, the book provides full coverage on managing continuous process improvement, procurement management, managing distressed projects, and managing multiple team projects. The companion Web site includes exercises and solutions that accompany the project management instruction in the book.
792 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 9, 2013
If you are aiming for a career in IT project management and plan to work for a very large corporation with a large budget, this book may be helpful to you, as that is the field of experience of the author.
Otherwise, you will find his examples throughout the book very frustrating, as he does not relate his theories to other business or professional fields, volunteer organizations, or other areas where project management skills may be utilized. The chapters are long and he is VERY long winded, saying in 40 pages what could be said in 10. It also often feels like he is assuming the learner has previous experience in the project management field, which is often not the case with an undergraduate level college learner.
It is obvious Wysocki has a lot of experience and is proud of it, but the book is heavily overloaded with the author's self-promotion and he never misses an opportunity to toot his own horn. My instructor also indicated that the test bank for the Wysocki book was riddled with errors. This was quite evident on the tests we took that were generated from it.
After a few semesters with this book, my local college received so many complants from Project Management students that they are changing the text for next semester to Project Management: A Managerial Approach by Jack R Meredith and Samual J Mantel by Wiley Publishing.
If you can wade through this tome, there are concepts that will be useful to you, but you will have to work hard to re-interpret them to the field of project management in general.
Otherwise, you will find his examples throughout the book very frustrating, as he does not relate his theories to other business or professional fields, volunteer organizations, or other areas where project management skills may be utilized. The chapters are long and he is VERY long winded, saying in 40 pages what could be said in 10. It also often feels like he is assuming the learner has previous experience in the project management field, which is often not the case with an undergraduate level college learner.
It is obvious Wysocki has a lot of experience and is proud of it, but the book is heavily overloaded with the author's self-promotion and he never misses an opportunity to toot his own horn. My instructor also indicated that the test bank for the Wysocki book was riddled with errors. This was quite evident on the tests we took that were generated from it.
After a few semesters with this book, my local college received so many complants from Project Management students that they are changing the text for next semester to Project Management: A Managerial Approach by Jack R Meredith and Samual J Mantel by Wiley Publishing.
If you can wade through this tome, there are concepts that will be useful to you, but you will have to work hard to re-interpret them to the field of project management in general.
May 20, 2012
Read 14 of the 18 chapters as part of the Software Project Management course (SEIS625) at the Graduate Programs in Software, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul.
The text provided a good introduction about the Project Management process from the perspective of software development projects. The book describes the Project Management Lifecycle, consisting of the five process groups, in the context of four typical style of projects - Traditional, Agile, Extreme, and Emertxe (extreme spelled backwards). The five process groups are namely Scoping, Planning, Launching, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing defined by the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK).
The author, Robert K. Wysocki, an experienced project manager provides many insights based on his experience and perspective through out the book - and continually keeps and steers the discussion towards a common sense approach to Project Management. Project Management, according to Dr. Bob, is organized common sense.
Definitely a good text if you are looking for an introduction to Project Management, especially from a software development perspective, and are interested in advancing to the next level in the practice and understanding of this discipline.
The text provided a good introduction about the Project Management process from the perspective of software development projects. The book describes the Project Management Lifecycle, consisting of the five process groups, in the context of four typical style of projects - Traditional, Agile, Extreme, and Emertxe (extreme spelled backwards). The five process groups are namely Scoping, Planning, Launching, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing defined by the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK).
The author, Robert K. Wysocki, an experienced project manager provides many insights based on his experience and perspective through out the book - and continually keeps and steers the discussion towards a common sense approach to Project Management. Project Management, according to Dr. Bob, is organized common sense.
Definitely a good text if you are looking for an introduction to Project Management, especially from a software development perspective, and are interested in advancing to the next level in the practice and understanding of this discipline.
November 12, 2017
Absolutely terrible, and I only had to read three-quarters of it for class. I don't think I learned one single thing.
February 4, 2023
Interesting book about project management. The author presents a myriad of different models and approaches, grouping them in Traditional, Agile, Extreme, and Emertxe (extreme spelled backwards). The author seems very experienced and presents project management from many different angles.
The Good
- Very thorough presentation of concepts
- Illustrations help to explain the concepts
- Chapters are self contained
The Bad
- Too long, several repetitions
- Often abstract and little guidance on how to implement in real live
Conclusion
A good book that is held back by its content. It strives for giving a complete overview, but gets lost in the details. The amount of presented models is staggering and there is little information on how to implement this in the real world. It is a shame because this book presents many relevant content, but the reader has to work unnecessarily hard to extract this information and apply it to their context.
The Good
- Very thorough presentation of concepts
- Illustrations help to explain the concepts
- Chapters are self contained
The Bad
- Too long, several repetitions
- Often abstract and little guidance on how to implement in real live
Conclusion
A good book that is held back by its content. It strives for giving a complete overview, but gets lost in the details. The amount of presented models is staggering and there is little information on how to implement this in the real world. It is a shame because this book presents many relevant content, but the reader has to work unnecessarily hard to extract this information and apply it to their context.
October 28, 2020
The text was required for class, and I was initially excited to read it. I soon found that it was edited poorly and contains a myriad of alphabet soup, which is useful to the author and worthless to the learner.
The author repeats sections throughout and gives very little context to the concepts that he discusses. He toots his horn a lot, which is also very hard to read when the concepts aren't being made clear.
Throughout my read, I was impressed with how little the author cared about my education on the subject matter insofar as I understood he was an expert.
I really can't express how disappointed I was in the content of this book and the fact that my university included this in the required readings.
The author repeats sections throughout and gives very little context to the concepts that he discusses. He toots his horn a lot, which is also very hard to read when the concepts aren't being made clear.
Throughout my read, I was impressed with how little the author cared about my education on the subject matter insofar as I understood he was an expert.
I really can't express how disappointed I was in the content of this book and the fact that my university included this in the required readings.
September 9, 2024
Good overview of project management, but very long winded and repetitive. Makes a lot of statements without much backing evidence. I got some helpful insights from this book but it could have been 50% shorter.
June 27, 2018
Long and educational on the the different project management practices.
January 3, 2019
Provides a good overview of Project Management
October 19, 2020
Very good and easy to read,
If you are willing to learn PM, go ahead!
If you are willing to learn PM, go ahead!
October 27, 2020
Very insight
March 6, 2021
This book is unreadable and people who make up or use this many arbitrary acronyms deserve a special place in hell. Emertxe PMLC? What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
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December 17, 2022Haven't read it all but I'm writing my exam today, and will be turning off Kindle's ability to post my textbook reading activity to Goodreads :D
October 8, 2016
Avoid this book. It is a compilation of multiple author's work on everything. Too much of information way too little, if any, focus. The answer is 42.
Too much of I/Me/My. No doubt, the author possesses a lot of knowledge on PM, he is a working consultant as well. Quite often consultants choose to overwhelm potential clients with useful information for free to prove their value. Nothing wrong with that. Other than that, the potential clients are usually left with multiple questions with no one to answer them, other than the consultant himself, but this time on different conditions.
Too much of I/Me/My. No doubt, the author possesses a lot of knowledge on PM, he is a working consultant as well. Quite often consultants choose to overwhelm potential clients with useful information for free to prove their value. Nothing wrong with that. Other than that, the potential clients are usually left with multiple questions with no one to answer them, other than the consultant himself, but this time on different conditions.
March 2, 2013
Very interesting book if you want to understand the difference from the traditional project management method and the agile, extreme programming, scrum, etc.
Livro bastante interessante se você deseja compreender a diferença do método tradicional de gestão de projetos e compará-los com agile, extreme programming e scrum.
Livro bastante interessante se você deseja compreender a diferença do método tradicional de gestão de projetos e compará-los com agile, extreme programming e scrum.
September 7, 2015
Specifically software project management. Lays out a different perspective of all the PM activities than PMBOK and included lots of practical content versus just the 'getting certified' content. Having no interest in being a PM, this illuminated lots of practicalities that I appreciate as I work through SW projects as a team member wearing different hats.
February 6, 2013
It is an excellent book as a reference for traditional and non traditional management techniques, but lacks of deep in agile methods.
April 20, 2015
I am by no means a go-to resource on the subject of Project Management, but this seems like a very thorough overview of the practices and challenges (especially paired with the PMBOK.)
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October 27, 2015My newest etextbook for For PROJECT MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION I (CAPSTONE PROJECT Course 1)which Start today
August 18, 2022
This book contains a huge amount of information but it is very long-winded, extremely dry and rather inaccessible.
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September 24, 2011this is simple but advance textbook. I presently reading it.
Oruero Emmanuel
Oruero Emmanuel
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews