What makes this book valuable to the practicing professional is that it uses one of the most common business tools, Microsoft Excel, and shows how to apply this tool to real world problems. The accompanying CD ROM comes with TreePlan for developing decision trees and CrystalBall for Monte Carlo simulation, as well as workbooks that are used to support the plethora of realistic examples used throughout the book.
Although the book is business-oriented and better suited for operations analysis and MBA students and practitioners, I've used it as a reference for project planning, computer system capacity planning and performance analysis, and IT security risk management - these practical uses of the material show the value of the book in the real world. The supporting web site that the author maintains has materials for lesson plans, errata and additional resources that make this book particularly valuable for the academic and business environments.