There are many books for project management on the market nowadays, as this turns into a profession. So why, would you ask, would somebody bother to write one more? The answer is simple – because none is perfect.
This is not to say that “Project Management for Profit” is the perfect book! However, it covers an important existing gap in the market, namely the “get to the practical basics in PM”. “Project Management for Profit” talks about the practical aspects of managing a project under tight deadlines, with multiple stakeholders and quite a few problems. In other words, the book goes for project management as it happens in reality, not in the theory.
As such, “Project Management for Profit” addresses to persons who had quite a few project management experience and now want to troubleshoot quickly with the help of some expert advice. Harvard Business Review Press is a publishing house which happens to specialize in publishing study cases (among other things, it is the largest publisher of management study cases in the world). Naturally, “Project Management for Profit” is a book which should go for the practically illustration route, whilst still using the academic query and illustration approach. The Harvard case method might suit you or not, however it is a powerful practical tool, as most of the Harvard Business Review readers acknowledge it.
Authors themselves (Joe Knight, Roger Thomas and Brad Angus) have a lot of practical experience. They are the founders and managers of setpointinc.com, a company specializing in applied project management – and they talk a very hands on language throughout the whole book. The authors also offer some very nice and simple tips and tricks for running your projects on the parameters – I enjoyed a lot the percentage complete method, which allows you to drill down to the bottleneck factors and circumvent or eliminate them in order to get to the final result.
All in all, “Project Management for Profit” is not a book for rookies. Or more precisely, “Project Management for Profit” is not a complete handbook for those who want to learn project management from the roots to the advanced concepts. It is more of a companion book, designed to help practicians with useful methods and give you a hint of what might happen if you go one path or another. Falling in the “some experience” bucket, I enjoyed “Project Management for Profit” and I hope you might find this useful too…
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