Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme

Project management is often treated as a belief system and adherents to one cult reject and condemn all others. This is unfortunate because project management has been subjected to honest research and decades of practice have also yielded objectives results. This book is now in its fourth edition and is a handy introduction to three approaches to project management. I think it is very suitable for a 101 course in project management or for the general reader wanting to get a handle on things. Of course, if you want an in depth practical implementation guide to this or that method of project management, you will think this book has serious shortcomings. But you will also be judging the book for not being something it was never intended to be.

Robert Wysocki first lays out the basic ideas behind Traditional Project Management. He carefully explains its strengths and weaknesses and why it fits more with well structure projects with known outcomes, resources, and timetables. There are many topics he covers during this process. For example, the author contrasts the Critical Path versus the Critical Chain in managing the length of the project and applying resources. He carefully explains how each of these topics works with the Adaptive Project Framework. This first part takes about two-thirds of the book.

When the project outcomes require more flexibility, where learning is expected to take place along the way, and especially where the project process will include iterations of some of its components, this will do best with the Adaptive Project Framework, and this is covered in part two. He also covers Extreme Project Management for those types of projects, such as software development, where the precise nature of the final deliverable may not be known in the beginning.

Again, if you are looking for a solid introduction to these topics and to get your hands around the basic concepts of project management, this is a good resource. If you are looking for a detailed practitioners guide to a specific method of project management, you should probably look elsewhere. This book was never intended to be that.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

The presented methodologies are very reallistic and up-to-date. The way the information is organized, could be more user friendly.

even though it is outdated. You have all the major ingrediants for PMP.
It is very low cost. The computer software MS 2003 is outdated, but you can download the free trial version 2007.

It's a good book on project management. I wish it was more in line with the standards from PMI. Also covers some advanced topics such as portfolio management but not in much detail.

If you are a practicing project manager, you may not find this book very useful. If you are new to Project Management (or planning to move to Project Management), then this book can help a lot. This book in my opinion is a text book (and a very good one). Book covers critical aspects of Project Management and explains planning and scheduling in an easy-to-understand fashion. I found the examples for backward pass, forward pass, constructing network diagram etc very useful. Author has used real-world examples so reader can co-relate to similar scenarios from their professional life.