How to Run Successful Projects III: The Silver Bullet

by Fergus O'Connell

The essential elements of project success packaged in an easy to apply and common sense approach which thousands of readers will attest works. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201748061
• ISBN13: 9780201748062
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Longman
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.4" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Good Material

For some time I was looking for good reading material for project management and thought a friend reference I purchased this book last year. At this moment I'm using most of the techniques described in the book and actually they works for me!. The practical guidelines help lot in day-to-day project planning scenarios and management of projects. This book is out of the traditional theoretical manner and I could recommend this for any body who would like to improve their skills on better project management.

Project Management Analysis

I've read a previous printing of this book from 1997 or around then...I found this book to be very helpful in assessing and analyzing the parts of the project and making sure I don't run into the pitfalls of each phase. It was a great followup for me after Steve McConnell's book on project surivial. After reading this book, I was able to drill down in more detail each portion of a project before I was undertaking it to make sure I handled the project in the right ways.

Effective techniques and easy reading

I've read more than 50 books on project management, and have reviewed a good number of them, but this is the first one that was fun to read. The author manages to keep the tone light and conversational, yet touch all of the important aspects of successfully managing software projects. While I am one of those die hards who doesn't believe in silver bullets--those elusive shortcuts to accomplishing complex tasks--any more than I believe in the tooth fairy, I think that the approach in this book comes close.Although the tone is light, the techniques are solid. I like the way the author strips away non-essential tasks and focuses on what is essential to successfully managing a project. He starts with visualizing the goal, which is an exercising in defining project objectives, and introduces a key concept that will be used through the book: Probability of Success Indicator (PSI). These indicators are checkpoints for ensuring that all critical success factors are satisfied and are closely tied to risk management. I especially like the common sense way projects are approached - develop a checklist, emphasize leadership and teamwork, carefully plan and manage expectations and communicate. These are the essence of project management, regardless of whether you are using the U.S. standard set forth in the PMBOK or the UK PRINCE2 approach. In fact, all of the techniques, including the 10-step methodology given in the book, will work with both the PMBOK and PRINCE2 approaches. Chapters I especially liked covered assessing project plans, issue resolution and how to shorten projects using accelerated analysis and design. I found some of the appendices valuable as well, especially Appendix 1 (ISO 9000 Estimating Procedure) and Appendix 2 (Structured Project Management, which summarizes the 10-step approach. If you use MS Project (which I do not), Appendix 6, Learning Microsoft Project 2000, may be useful.The only shortcoming is the lack of earned value as a project control tool, but for small projects this isn't a major issue. Overall this is an excellent book for new project managers for software development projects and it is also full of tips and techniques that an experienced project manager will appreciate.