Another Review of Manage It!

Greg Wilson posted a lovely review, Managing, Reviewing, and RESTing. I particularly like this part:

Her new book is her best yet: personal without being chatty, and informative without being dry, it covers everything a technical manager needs to know about running a development project.

Thanks Greg, and I'll make sure my editor sees that quote. We worked hard to make it readable.

Sightings of BCD, Manage It!, and Hiring the Best...

Tech Republic has the estimation chapter from Manage It!.

There's a great Manage It! review at Book Review: Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management.

Michael Fransen enjoyed Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. He posted a review. The session he took at Agile 2007 was "Hiring for an Agile Team," based on Hiring the Best ....

Catching Up with Reviews of Manage It!

Some lovely reviews of Manage It! were posted when I was traveling last month, and I didn't remember to blog them. Sigh.

Wagnerblog has a great review, focused the on schedule games chapter. (That chapter was a blast to write.)

My good friend an colleague, Ken Flowers, wrote this review. Here's the sentence I like the best:

Each part gives multiple suggestions about how to be successful in most common project management situations.

There is No One Right Way to manage projects. What works for me might not work for you, so keep thinking.

"Make Your Organization Work For You" Posted

The good folks at Projects@Work have posted an excerpt from Manage It!. The excerpt is Make Your Organization Work for You. There's no facility for comments there, so do leave comments here.

Gantt Charts and Agile

I don't have much use for Gantt charts; if you've determined the tasks in enough detail and far enough out to really see the critical path, you'll be wrong in 24-48 hours. If you don't put in that much detail, it's a pretty picture, but not enough information to manage the project. (Of course, Gantt charts are used by people other than the project manager and the project team--but mostly for nefarious purposes :-)

Tate Stuntz in The demise of the Gantt Chart in Agile Software Projects has a great article about why Gantts are not useful in Agile projects.

Aside: I'm happy to report there are no Gantt charts in Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. That's because there are other charts that provide much more detail, with more accuracy.

Nice Review of Manage It!

I'm pleased that here are several nice reviews of Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management.

See the most recent: The Library's post.

Portfolio Management is Not Project Management

While teaching a management class recently, one participant came up to me at a break, and said, "Why are you teaching us project management with this portfolio stuff? This is supposed to be a management workshop."

Portfolio management, determining which projects to fund and when, is management work. The best managers actively manage the portfolio, saying yes, no, and when to projects.

When project managers try to do portfolio management, many of them feel torn when they try to balance when to start each project. They can see the reasons for each project, and may not have enough information to be able to actually determine the strategy behind what the portfolio should be.

If you're a project manager, it's possible you have to define the portfolio of projects, just to keep your sanity. (That's why there's a chapter about portfolio management in Manage It!) But it's not project management. Your managers need to make those strategic decisions about what to do and when.

Manage it! is Available

Drum roll please...

Manage It! Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management is available. (I don't know when it will be available from Amazon. Soon, I suspect.)

See the press release. I'm sooo excited.

Manage It! Book Status

I am happy to report that Manage It! is at the printer, both the book and the cover. We're looking sometime in June as a ship date. Just thought you'd want to know :-)

New Name, New Cover

After speaking with Mary Poppendieck at the Software Development conference a few weeks ago, I instigated a name change for Successful Project Management with Andy and Dave. Mary said the name was boring, and I had a number of cutesy suggestions. Luckily, Dave cut through the cute, and we decided on "Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management." I'm much happier with this name. We have a new cover too. Yes, this project is winding it's way towards done.

Strengthening Writing

During the past few week, while editing Successful Project Management, I had an opportunity learned to discover other ways I weaken my writing.

I already knew about "get" and "put" and "do"--any words you can command a computer--are weak verbs. It's ok to use them to start writing, but my writing is stronger when I change those verbs to describe what I really want. I'd changed "Get people" to "Acquire people." Luckily, Esther reminded me we don't acquire people in organizations; we recruit, attract, or hire them, but we don't acquire them. (That's why we have review :-)

I also knew about the "lullaby" words: "just" is my favorite.

But I hadn't realized I was so enamored of "in order to," "So," or "Now." I managed to find all the "in order to" and remove the "in order". That helped me see what I really wanted to say. "Find a large wall in order to post your project dashboard" became "Find a large wall to post your project dashboard" which became "Post your project dashboard on a large wall." (That's an example, not a quote.) I started too many sentences with "So;" so I removed them all. (I might have 2 left, in dialogue.) Now, With those edits complete, I could attack the "now" removals. I used "now" as a way to sequence actions, without making a list.

I'm sure I have more strengthening to do can strengthen my writing more. The copyeditor is great, so I'll have lots of ideas/fixes when the copyediting is complete.

Book Status

Successful Project Management is off for copyediting. While reviewing, Esther and Daniel found some of my take-space words: So and Now. I just did a find-in-project (thank goodness for TextMate) and excised most of them. We'll see if the copyeditor leaves the few I left, or if she has a better idea.

If I can organize my thoughts, I'll post about take-space words that weaken writing.

Writing Status Report

I'm in what I hope is final editing for Successful Project Management. (I"m still doing gross editing, final copyediting is one more stage. But I'm not supposed to change ideas in that stage :-)

If you want to know how to write a book, read PragDave's series of So You Want to Write a Book. I'm rewriting several chapters that I didn't get right early in the writing. I had not yet found my voice. I think I now have. Here's a link to what Dave says about Finding Your Voice.

Roy says Writing A book Is Like Developing Software. I completely agree.

So my challenges now are to keep to topic and not add more. (It's already long enough.) I actually have release criteria for the book. (Bet you're not surprised :-)

Once I receive more feedback from my editor, to see if the changes I've made are good, I'll be able to get into the small markup editing. I won't be making April 2 as a release date. Sorry.

Successful Project Management Has a Cover

The PM book has a title: Successful Project Management: Modern, pragmatic techniques that work. And, it has a cover!

Cool, eh? I'm done with this round of editing, and am waiting for Andy's comments before we go to technical review.