A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition (PMBOK Guides)

This PMBOK guide is very well structured and the content is exposed neat and organized to cover all tasks and actions to be performed for project management in any field, ranging from Aerospace to civil engineering, and it is helpful as an entrance knowledge to be utilize to delve in other resources for expertness in the matter.

You'd think that a guide to project management would have a better organized structure than this. Project management in itself is not rocket science - it's about planning, structuring, timing, adjusting, controlling, which are all synonyms for the same thing: being organized. Yet I've read rocket science texts that are infinitely more readable and understandable than this book. Tax codes are easier to read than this. My phone bill is easier to read than this.

I have a feeling that the PMBOK Guide was not meant to be a learning text in the first place. Rather, it was probably meant to be a reference for project managers who are designing projects of various complexity and need something to guide them on how to manage the levels and eschelons of their project. It's written from a high-level format, each chapter breaking down the levels further and further to each nugget of information - as if each subchapter is one phase of a work breakdown structure. Logical, yes, but utterly dry, and filled with redundancy ad nauseum. Each blurb of text detail is written in a vague and fill-in-the-blank format, as if they were objects in a computer program. Obviously this was not designed with efficiency in mind.

If you have to get this book, I'd get it alongside Gary Heerken's Project Management. It's not great either, but at least it puts a face on the aspects of project that this book is trying to convey.

This book is really good and although it is a slightly different structure to other project management material, like Dennis Lock's book, it is an amazing resource.

Filled with documentation, definitions and best practice - definitely more suited for people studying Project Management rather than for those who simply want to know how to manage a project or who are starting to learn the basics of the profession.

I am studying project management - this book would never be my choice. It is required reading for the course, not only is it extremely dry, boring but repetitive. I understand the necessity for using this book, since it is the PMBOK, but readers beware... a large pot of coffee is required!

This book is a good start to learn the process and how each part flows into the next. With that said I would not have passed the PMP test without PMP Exam Prep from Rita Mulcahy.

Read this book and highlight what is important. Then read just the highlights. Then concentrate on Rita's book.

You cannot, cannot pass the test with just the PMBOK.