Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

This is a solid book on project management. It covers a lot of fundamentals such as effective communication, decision-making, planning, and problem solving.It's good and full of a lot of useful information, but not great. Berkun worked at Microsoft and was a project manager on Internet Explorer 1.0 - 5.0.A caveat - Internet Explorer is not my favorite product (even pre-Mozilla). But it is a complex product that requires extensive analysis, design, development and testing - and Berkun clearly knows the product development process well.The book does not offer any overall paradigm or methodology for project management. Rather it has short sections on subjects such as 'requirements' where Berkun will share whatever gems of knowledge he amassed in his years at Microsoft. Though I'm normally partial to books where the author presents an overall technique, I do find his anecdotes / advice to be useful. It provides a general context to making good decisions in product development.The only place where I'd really fault the book is that it leans very heavily to a waterfall process, and some of the advice is definitely more useable in a large organization than in a small one. If the book had less waterfall assumptions, I'd probably be willing to give it 5 stars.Despite this, Berkun's insights are still quite useful to someone even in a small startup environment, or pursuing product development in an agile framework.The book can be a bit boring in some sections, but is always informative and offers good advice.

I had a friend refer this book to me, and I'm glad that I took the time to read through it. It's a book that is best digested on a chapter by chapter basis, rather than a cover-to-cover read. It doesn't explore ground-breaking concepts. It touches on project management topics, but it doesn't dwell on any single topic for too long. He says several times that there are more detailed books for any given topic, and references many of them. It's a book about how to approach a project, get it done correctly, and how to work with other people through its different phases. I interpreted the primary foci of the book to be completing projects by collaborating effectively with other people and adjusting management methods to fit the project, rather than trying to fit the project into a particular management method.The book is written in a funny and informal way that allows it to be read and re-read without feeling like you're opening a textbook. I enjoyed how there weren't straight up procedures for exactly how a project manager should go about doing his/her job. There were rough guides, diagrams, anecdotes, and some suggestions for things that a manager could do, but it seemed obvious to me that these were meant to be interpreted and adjusted to fit both the situation and your own style.I purchased this book on the Kindle. Now that I've read it, I'm considering purchasing an actual copy so I have one to flip through for reference in the future. I plan on referring this book to my coworkers as well. It has helped me define several things that I can work on to improve my success in my current job and any future jobs.

The title of this review of "Making Things Happen" is chosen with set purpose in mind. Seattle's Best is a fine coffee brand offered daily at my place of work. It is tasty, even, in a way, excellent. So is the book, in a manner of speaking. But let the reader beware. The flavor that comes across is that of the Seattle area, home of Microsoft Corporation. The author is a Microsoft veteran. And it seems that all of his work experience, reflected in this otherwise important and well written book, is deeply colored by his Microsoft project activities.Kindly keep in mind that the above is not necessarily meant to be any sort of condemnation of the book. There are, in fact, many interesting ideas conveyed therein. But to represent this book as Mastering Project Management, as its subtitle imples, is really quite a stretch. One could probably make a good case that Mastering Project Management requires acquiring a working knowledge of the Project Management Body of Knowledge. And Amazon also makes available a very good and handy Guide to this Body of Knowledge. However, I would argue that Phillip Metzger's classic, "Managing a Programming Project", could more rightly be judged as accomplishing the goal of Mastering Project Management in a single volume. Now, readers of that wonderful book could point out that Metzger's book has a decidely Armonk, which is to say, IBM, flavor. However, Metzger's book really does provide a much better general overview to the topic of project management. Scott Berkun's book is not bad. It is simply not, as another reviewer has averred, deserving of the lavish encomiums heaped upon it by the majority of other, previous reviewers. If you want to learn how things were done successfully at Microsoft, by all means, pick up this book. But if you are looking for a more general representation of the serious business of project managment, I'd stick with Phil Metzger's. God bless.

Muy buen libro. Claridad en los conceptos. Muy útil para los que no sepamos cómo poner en práctica los conceptos de project management

Useful if all you need is a basic introduction. Most info can be found free online. But nice to have it collected in one source. Well written and easy to understand.

邦訳も出ている『アート・オブ・プロジェクトマネジメント ―マイクロソフトで培われた実践手法』のrevised edition。著者はマイクロソフトでIEの開発プロジェクト等を率いていた人。邦訳も読んだけど、このrevised editionが出たと聞いて、英語と仕事の両面の勉強のためにと購入したのが2008年の3月。それからゆっくり私が携わってきたプロジェクトの進行に合わせて読んできた。もちろん、私の英語力では完璧に理解することはできないけれど、比較的平易な文章なので読みやすかった。それ以上に、自分がプロマネもどきの仕事をしているせいか、使われている用語になじみがあるのが大きいのかもしれないが、とても分かりやすい本だった。おかげで（？）自分のプロジェクトもなんとか成功し、あらためてざっと読みなおしてみると、著者がこの本で強調していること、特にヒューマン・コミュニケーションの良し悪しがプロジェクトの成否に大きな影響を及ぼすことが理解できた。おそらく、この本を読んでいなければ、プロマネの役割と認識することが、失敗していただろう。PMPの知識体系を学んだだけではわからない、より実践的なプロジェクト管理の本だ。プロジェクト管理は知識だけでも経験だけでもダメ。その双方を兼ね備える必要があるのだと思う。これからもいろいろなプロジェクトに参画すると思うが、その際に常に手元に置きたい。その意味では私の座右の書としたい本だ。早く翻訳してくれないかなぁ。

Buena lectura que te ayuda a pensar en cómo ser más productivo y hacer que las cosas sucedan. Trabaja con temas sencillos bien estructurados.

Scott Berkun use humor to make his point on several topics, which ease understanding of the various project management concepts. I enjoy reading this book because it contains lots of advices on people issues, not found very often in other PM books. The title is well chosen and aligned with the book content.