Hollywood Secrets of Project Management Success

by James R. Persse

Learn best practices for managing software development projects from an unexpected but surprisingly relevant source: the producers of major motion pictures. What can Hollywood s hundred years of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735625697
• ISBN13: 9780735625693
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Microsoft Press
• Length: 285 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Not apples-to-apples, but an insightful read!

I agree with some of the earlier criticism of this book in that the author, Persse, does not fully tie in a soluble fix to issues within the IT industry after analyzing the "Hollywood" project machine. The Hollywood method of doing things is just simply too different from Information Technology and its methods within the American business organization. Having said this, I think part of Persse's point in analyzing the way Hollywood does projects, is for us to challenge our methods in IT, or at least our way of thinking about it. Yes - it is different. As another reader points out - many in the IT industry work 8-10 hour days compared to Hollywood's 12-16 hour days. And yes, an IT organization may have full-time employees and invest in employee development as opposed to a Hollywood project which will audition and hire only the best, most fitting candidate for that specific project and release them from their contract afterward. Is 100% contract labor the next step for the IT industry? This is doubtful, but there is still a valuable lesson here. These differences are paramount, and as Persse points out from numerous interviews and concrete examples - these differences are the foundation of how Hollywood has honed and molded their success. This book was an interesting 3rd-person perspective to project planning. Take a moment to step outside your work-cultural "norm" to see how Hollywood conquers some of the more common pitfalls to project planning. I doubt that an IT professional could implement all of these ideas without radically overhauling the organization (if not the industry), but it is a worthwhile read, and may challenge you to consider your planning and goal-setting on a completely different level.