BOOK REVIEW
Book Title: Managing Business Projects: The Essentials
Author: Frank Einhorn
Publisher: CRC Press
List Price: $69.95
Format: Soft cover, 516 pages
Publication Date: 2022
ISBN: 978-1-032-27602-1
Reviewer: Bill Sundermann
Review Date: October 2023
Introduction
With a textbook title, project managers might expect just another rehash of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). But with the author’s extensive work experience at IBM and later as consultant and teacher, Managing Business Projects combines the right amount of core information with helpful guidance from a long career. As the book cover explains, a healthy portion of the book focuses on activities before, after, and surrounding the standard project work. So, the overarching lifetime of the project is covered, reaching topics not typically offered in a standard textbook.
Overview of Book’s Structure
The book is organized into four parts. Part 1 provides an overview of business project management including terminology, PM’s roles, methodologies, and environment. Moving into Part 2, the book lays out the usual core elements of topics such as project scope definition, team organization, monitoring, and controlling. The value the author adds to these fundamentals is the commentary from his own experiences plus the summaries at the end of each chapter reflecting advice from the real world. The author uses Part 3 of the book to dig into special topics such as governance, project review steps, negotiation, and Agile approaches. Some readers may be disappointed by the eight pages devoted to the chapter on Agile, but should be mindful of the book’s intent to provide guidance on managing the entire project universe, not just to explain how to apply Agile principles. The distinguishing content comes in Part 4 where Einhorn’s teaching credentials are evident in a variety of study materials.
Highlights
This book goes beyond the basic lessons in managing a project. Einhorn has crafted the book to effectively instruct, then added helpful quizzes (with answers) for self-assessments and short business cases to practice applying techniques and concepts. Additionally, the instructional text recommends specific case numbers in Part 4 to maximize learning outcomes. The cases provide exercises in everything from writing a Project Definition Document to scope planning to issues management. The topical Study Guide pulls it all together by providing a table (by topic) referencing chapter, case reference and questions that serve to reinforce the material.
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How to cite this work: Sundermann, B. (2023). Managing Business Projects: The Essentials, book review, PM World Journal, Vol. XII, Issue XII, December. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/pmwj136-Dec2023-Sundermann-managing-business-projects-book-review.pdf
About the Reviewer
Bill Sundermann
Coppell, TX USA
Bill Sundermann is a team builder and Agile coach with 27 years’ experience in the financial services technology industry. His specialties are on team building, effective messaging, and process consulting across multiple software development teams. He holds an MBA from SMU and is a certified PMP and SAFe Release Train Engineer focusing on helping teams in their Agile journey. Email address: bsundermann@verizon.net
Editor’s note: This book review was the result of a partnership between the PM World Journal and the PMI Dallas Chapter. Authors and publishers provide books to the PM World Journal Editor; books are delivered to the PMI Dallas Chapter where they are offered free to PMI members who agree to provide a review within 45 days; book reviews are published in the PM World Journal and PM World Library. Reviewers can normally claim PDU’s for PMP recertification (or continuing education credits for other certifications) upon publication of their book reviews.
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