Book Review

Absolute Beginners Guide to Project Management
Author:  Gregory M. Horine 

This book is written for the beginner who is thrust into the role of project manager, but it's also good preparatory material for someome who might be considering a career in project management -- a good choice considering the emphasis on project-oriented work in today's corporations and small businesses.

The book is thorough without being cumbersome, covering the material in just 288 pages excluding the index. It has a nice easy style and approaches what could be a heavy topic with light-hearted commentary and humorous illustrations. The table of contents provides a good outline of the content and each chapter is summarized with a mindmap-like radial outline, and a bullet list of key points titled The Absolute Minimum. The subject is presented in four parts. There's an overview jumpstart section, followed by sections on planning, control, and execution.

The Project Management Jumpstart section is composed of three chapters that provide an overview of project management, a discussion of the Project Manager, and the elements of a project. Once you've finished the section, you'll be comfortable with much of the concepts, terminology and processes of project management.

The second section is an in-depth discussion of Project Planning. It nicely covers all the elements of the planning process starting with project definition, then decomposing project planning into its constituent parts of developing a work breakdown, estimating, developing a schedule, and developing a budget.

Section three covers Project Control. This is where a good number of books start to get hazy, but Horine does a fine job of isolating the various tasks of managing changes, deliverables, issues, risks, and quality. His section on Powerful Techniques for Project Control lists eleven separate tips that if diligently applied will go a long way toward insuring project success.

Section four is the final section on Project Execution. It focuses on what you do while the project is underway. The main topics are communication, managing expectation, team performance, managing differences, and managing vendors. The sections on managing differences and managing vendors were a pleasant surprise. These topics are often overlooked in books like this. The chapter on managing differences deals with the idea of juggling cross-functional and cross-cultural differences and managing projects that are geographically dispersed. The chapter on managing vendors explains the unique aspects of dealing with contractors and outsourced resources. A final chapter deals with closing a project, covering challenges and key principles. It includes a 13 point checklist for closing a project intelligently.

The book is well-written and superbly organized. Highly recommended.

- Jake Alexander