review of Art Of Project Management by Scott Berkun

The Art of Project Management, by Scott Berkun, is not the last word on the subject of project management. It does present a picture of the state of the art at this time, and the list of suggested other reading, each with context, alone, is worth the price of the book.

Berkun gives solid advice about Microsoft's competitive advantage -- a culture of effective project management -- in a conversational manner. Often while reading the book I imagined that I was receiving advice from the author over a fine meal.

I also thought that Microsoft might have a beef with him revealing what could by a slight stretch be considered trade secrets. Like most trade secrets, these revelations, taken by the each, are obvious and benign -- harrass people into showing up at meetings, when you really need them to be at your meetings; try to gather intelligence about everyone else's points of view before meetings, stuff like that.

TAOPM, like many other business books, covers material on the curriculum of the organizational behavior class in an MBA program.

The practical suggestions for prioritization, and practical techniques to know when you, as a manager, are not being effective -- nobody is going to tell you if you can't figure it out yourself -- are excellent and born from experience.

Reading TAOPM has, I believe, made me a more effective project manager, and not just in computer programming realms. This book belongs on the shelf, if not in the pocket, of every working independent consultant alive.

On the critical side, sometimes Berkun gets too caught up in his autobiography. It seems like there are two books here: the project management advice could be combed out into its own leaflet without the personal memoir. I suspect there was even more memoir in the drafts. The autobio serves to give context for the advice, and weight too, but it made the book take longer to read than it would have were the book more concise.

previous - next