Information Technology Project Management, Second Edition
Author: Kathy Schwalbe
List Price: $60.95
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ISBN: 0619035285
Publisher: Course Technology (16 July, 2001)
Sales Rank: 33,017
Average Customer Rating: 4.69 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Excellent source of Project Management techniques in IT.
By studying the Project Management processes in this book, I passed my PMP exam! A wealth of information is contained in this structured text. The concepts are easy to understand, and the real-life examples are enjoyable to read. Every Project Manager should have this book to use as a reference. All IT professionals would benefit by the author's knowledge and expertise. Helpful ideas are jumping off the pages!
Rating: 5 out of 5
This text uses the PMBOK Guide(from PMI) as a fundation
I read this book to help understand the details in "Project Management Body of Knowledge" Guild (ISBN: 1-880410-12-5). This book use some IT projects for examples. It is good for beginners who want to know all the project management knowledge areas.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Good book in general with a few buts
I agree with most of the reviews in general. I have been using this book as a textbook for a class on Project Management. I enjoy reading the chapters and it gives you a good overview of Project Management and the terms used in it but, that is my issue, it's an overview. I like reading the case studies but frankly I think the assignments at the end of each chapter have many that ask for more detail then the overview content of the book gives. I find this to be an issue with many textbooks. They write the book concisely to cover a whole topic in one textbook hitting the highlights, but write the assignments to be done as if you had been studying the subject in depth.
Case in point: Chapter 11 Exercise 5 on page 357. Draft an RFP (Request for Proposal) for purchasing laptops for all students, faculty and staff at your college or university. use the outline provided in Figure 11-4. List all the assumptions you made in preparing the RFP.
Sounds like a great assignment, with the exception that an RFP is a very detailed document. In the outline it is also suppose to include a Statement of Work ( a document that should be prepared before an RFP) and schedule information. To do this assignment you basically have to dream up an entire project and do previous prep work in order to write an RFP. Also, this outline is the only example of an RFP in the whole book. There is no example of a completed RFP, after all, this is an "overview" book. I have been researching on the net for sample RFP documents. I have yet to find one that even remotely looks like this outline or follows the criteria in this book.
I spend hours and hours every week just doing the prep work to get my head around this random assignments.
This book would have been better had it just made the assignments a case study that built from Chapter 1 on, instead of bits and pieces of this kind of project or that. I think I read in the main review that the book uses NWA as a case study to teach, that doesnt even happen till like Chapter 12 or 13. Did this person really read this book??
I don't mind being taught principles of Project Management but don't just hand me terms and principles and sketchy outline examples and expect me to give you the full blown details of a project that I have to make up mostly out of my own head and hope it's right. Projects are team efforts and some of these things asked for would be the product of a whole team's input not just one person yet in assignments it is just the student doing it all as if they were the whole freaking team. This kind of thing annoys me to no end in textbooks.
I could give more examples but I am already a partially dissenting voice among reviewers. I guess I could sum it up as a good book to have and read but it is a LOUSY TEXTBOOK. Similar Products
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) -- 2000 Edition
IT Project Management: On Track from Start to Finish
Systems Analysis and Design
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