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Great seller and comes highly recommended. Product was delivered as product and in condition as promised. THANK YOU. Great product @ great price.
The antiquated examples were probably good in the first edition, but totally irrelevant in today's technologically advanced world. Most of the "problems" can be solved (and were) with modern technology. Not worth the time to read.
This book was shipped to me in a timely manner, and the condition was exactly as was posted. I will definitely buy more books from this seller.
This book was part of my study package for a Masters course. It covers a wide span of applicaions; construction, computer related and manufacturing are among the many applications it covers. It doesn't give guidance to new or "to be" managers. Instead, it gives real life examples of issues which a project manager is more likely to come across. It is also based on the PMPBok. I would recommend te book for anyone who wants to further pursue project management as a career.
The Case Studies themselves sound like factual description of what happened with absolutely no judgment or analysis following any of the Case Studies.Since I like to end a review on a good note, the CONS first - the blurb on the back of the book makes three claims out of which two are clearly suspect. The Case Studies are roughly divided into 16 Chapters that don't necessarily follow the Process Groups or Knowledge Areas in the PMBOK Guide (PMI). Each chapter starts with a 1 page summary of the author's opinion on that topic - no more, no less. In my opinion, it will only confuse the reader who is focussed on passing the exam to read these Case Studies that don't have any analysis associated or references to the PMP exam (I didn't find the word PMP anywhere between the covers of this book). I would have paid three to five times the price of this book if that had been included. The only way this claim would come true is if you attended a class led by a very competent instructor that can glean the relevant points from these Case Studies and present what you need to pass the PMP. For this claim to be true, one would expect discussions of the Case Studies presented in the book by the author and a summary of lessons learned so you can understand what these best practices and pitfalls are. It is amazing that something so simple has not happened in the Project Management profession even after all these years.I have treasured this book since the day I received it and I am looking forward to joining a local group of experienced Project Managers (meaning the Austin chapter of the PMI) to discuss and learn from these Case Studies.
A detailed analysis of the Pros and Cons of this book follows:First, a summary of what is contained in the book - 437 pages objectively documenting 68 real life Case Studies spanning the last 20 to 30 years and 1 very neat Time Management exercise at the end. Classes that use Case studies seem to be common at the Harvard Business School but apparently not in the Project Management world. There are also quite a few typos and grammatical errors that may be common for a First Edition.The last CON - I really wish the book had an extra 200-300 pages of Kerzner's interpretations of these Case Studies and his opinions of how things should have been handled. Isn't the assumption that you don't know them, one of the reasons for reading the book. I have not noticed this problem with other Kerzner books.
The claim regarding 'follows and supports preparation for the PMP certification exam' is not supported by the content in the book. Oh, well. The third claim is regarding the book presenting the best practices and pitfalls of PM implementations in the real world. The claim regarding the Case Studies covering a wide range of industries is definitely true. The Case Studies are typically 3-4 pages long with a couple that are 40-50 pages long and a few that are only 1 page long.
The time management exercise (about 24 pages) is one of the best sections in the entire book. And definitely not as valuable as the ones presented in this book. I will sign up for one of his classes.Okay, the PROS - there aren't many books on Project Management that have real world Case Studies. The Instructor's manual is ONLY available through the publisher directly if you represent a University teaching Project Management curriculum. Anyway, this does not happen anywhere in the book except very briefly and indirectly at the beginning of each of the 16 chapters (1 page per chapter). It is simple, yet worth spending time on.
This is a long awaited book containing Case Studies from a respected author and Project Management guru. And to top everything, these Case Studies are presented in a very objective way so that you can try to see things the way they really are and engage in educational discussions with a group of experienced professionals to gain not just PM knowledge but PM WISDOM. For this reason alone, this book is worth a LOT more than its price. The Case Studies of the Denver Airport (under the Managing Scope Changes Chapter) and the Space Shuttle Challenger (under the Project Risk Management Chapter) are probably the most valuable Case Studies (in my opinion).
A definite buy AFTER obtaining the PMP Certification. I was thrown off track quite a few times by some ambiguous statements and I had to read them carefully a second time to interpret them correctly. Example chapter names are 'Negotiating for Resources', 'Project Estimating', and 'Project Planning'. This is very profound as it implies that these mistakes can be avoided by Project Managers that learn from the past mistakes made by other corporations (from these Case Studies).
Without the best practices and pitfalls EXPLICITLY stated, how do you know for sure what they are. The language used is sometimes hard to interpret. These are the Case Studies that are 40 and 50 pages respectively that I mention at the beginning of the review.The Preface carries a very important observation (and message) regarding how these basic project management mistakes are still being repeated even 20-30 years later in modern day corporations. I hope you found this long and objective review helpful and that you benefit from these Case Studies.
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