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Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) | 
| Author: Scott Berkun
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy Used: $25.99
You Save: $14.00 (35%)
New (37) Used (7) from $25.99
Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 31128
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Pages: 408
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 0596517718
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9780596517717
ASIN: 0596517718
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Cover may have crease.
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Product Description
In the updated edition of this critically acclaimed and bestselling book, Microsoft project veteran Scott Berkun offers a collection of essays on field-tested philosophies and strategies for defining, leading, and managing projects. Each essay distills complex concepts and challenges into practical nuggets of useful advice, and the new edition now adds more value for leaders and managers of projects everywhere. Based on his nine years of experience as a program manager for Internet Explorer, and lead program manager for Windows and MSN, Berkun explains to technical and non-technical readers alike what it takes to get through a large software or web development project. Making Things Happen doesn't cite specific methods, but focuses on philosophy and strategy. Unlike other project management books, Berkun offers personal essays in a comfortable style and easy tone that emulate the relationship of a wise project manager who gives good, entertaining and passionate advice to those who ask. Topics in this new edition include: How to make things happen Making good decisions Specifications and requirements Ideas and what to do with them How not to annoy people Leadership and trust The truth about making dates What to do when things go wrong Complete with a new forward from the author and a discussion guide for forming reading groups/teams, Making Things Happen offers in-depth exercises to help you apply lessons from the book to your job. It is inspiring, funny, honest, and compelling, and definitely the one book that you and your team need to have within arm's reach throughout the life of your project. Coming from the rare perspective of someone who fought difficult battles on Microsoft'sbiggest projects and taught project design and management for MSTE, Microsoft's internal best practices group, this is valuable advice indeed. It will serve you well with your current work, and on future projects to come.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
More than a T-Shirt November 18, 2008
S. D. Sewell (Tampa, FL)
"Been there, done that, and here's the proof". Not merely anecdotal information, this book leaves you wishing that Scott Berkun worked down the hall from you. Straight to the point, he defines what works, what doesn't, and why. He lays out the real world examples that create the framework to support his teaching. For a book on project management, this is an easy read. Better yet, the information is easily applied to your current project.
Great for Project Managers - and Staff September 11, 2008
E. Peck (Orlando, FL)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This gives some great insight, not only on how to do project management well but on how to manage people in general. I wish more of the managers I have worked with over the years had had this available.
If you are not a manager, but work in IT this is still worth your time. It gives a great look into just what project managers are dealing with, and how you can best help them succeed.
The concepts and advice are all things that I would want every team member to know well, with any team I was on. And it is all born out of hard work and excellent experience. This isn't a bunch of purely idealistic advice - it is grounded in reality.
Great book! September 5, 2008
Maxim Soloviev
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I've read first edition of this book and Scott's other book - Myths of Innovation. Was very happy about both of them.
So when time came to recommend good book for my manager I had no doubt. After that he was screaming everywhere how this book is :)
Practical, useful advice on how to realistically run a project August 25, 2008
Lars Bergstrom (Chicago, IL)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Scott does a great job again in the new edition of this book of providing well-organized, practically useful guidance on how to work on and run a project. Even if you're not actually in charge of a project, I'd recommend this as a book to help you understand what should be getting done on it. The three biggest areas he focuses on are how to ensure a project has proper focus and clear priorities, how to run meetings and do feature-level design, and how to handle a project as it moves from start to finish.
The key to proper focus and clear priorities is the tie between the mission, goals, features, and tasks in a project. Scott provides a great framework for tying them together, ensuring they're created, and ensuring the team understands them.
The advice on running meetings and doing feature-level design is the only area that might not work as well for those outside of Microsoft. While I highly identify with it, and think that he's clearly stated the best practices for our environment, your mileage may vary.
Finally, he does a great job of talking about the difference between the start, middle, and end-game. Many people try to use a single process throughout and either overburden the start of the project or allow the end-game to spin wildly out of control. Scott's very clear about how to apply the right level of touch and raise the process bar at safe but necessary increments as a project goes on.
For this new addition, he addressed all of the negatives of the original - honestly, it's so good that if you have the first I recommend buying the second! I particularly enjoy the exercises, especially the reflective ones, as they help to cement all of the lessons I should've learned when I read the first version...
A classic to put along other master pieces August 10, 2008
Luis Abreu (Funchal, Madeira Portugal)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
[...]
In these last days of vacations, I've managed to finish reading this really cool book on project management. Even though I'm not a project manager, this was one of those books I've heard lots of good things about and I can tell you now (after finishing reading it) that I wasn't disappointed with it.
Besides being fun and easy reading, you'll find lots of great tips on this book. For instance, I'll be using some of the ideas presented on the Skills and Management parts on my work from now on. If you ask me, I'd say that the last chapter (Powers and Politics) is more than enough for justifying the book's price!
Overall, I'm giving it 9/10 and I'm putting it on my special reference shelf, where I've already got Peopleware (ok, I've just noticed that I haven't publish a review on this book on my blog. I'll do it on the next days), The mythical man-month, etc. So, if you haven't read this book and you're on the development business, do yourself a favor and pick a copy and then read it from cover to cover! You should to be a better professional after reading it!
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