Peer Review

Project Management Book

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Feb 18, 2023 by Business

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

The text covers projects and stages, roles and responsibilities, project definition, risk management, estimating, planning, tracking, controlling and reporting, quality management, and basic project management information. This project management book will also be of interest to non-IT people who find themselves involved in "IT" projects.

Type of Material:

Open (Access) Textbook

Recommended Uses:

This can be used in class, for homework, by individuals or teams. Information can be included in lectures and this can be used as supplemental material in any course that needs basic project management information.

Technical Requirements:

Accessed using Firefox V110, no other special plug-ins appear to be needed

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Understand the basic principles and concepts of project management.
Discover the common structure of IT projects.
Identify the various project team roles and related responsibilities.
Understand how to define and describe projects and project outcomes.
Understand the processes and activities related to project risk management.
Understand the processes and activities related to project estimating.
Understand the processes and activities related to project planning.
Understand the various approaches to project support.
Understand the processes and activities related to project tracking, controlling and reporting.
Understand the processes and activities related to project change and issue management.
Understand the processes and activities related to project quality management.
Understand the processes and activities related to closing and ending projects.

Target Student Population:

This book is recommended for general education, upper-level undergraduate, and as supplemental for graduate courses. This would also be of interest to professionals who need information on basic project management.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Users must be able to navigate to a website, click on embedded links to open chapters, and page through the book as needed. This book can also be downloaded as a PDF free of charge.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

The author clearly describes the processes and activities associated with planning, managing, and controlling predictive IT projects.
This book takes a holistic approach to project management and discusses not only the basics of project management but also common issues and challenges that can cause problems in projects.

Concerns:

The author does not refer to professional standards relating to the project management profession, although nothing he said was contradictory.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

This project management book is easy to understand and written for comprehension.
The content is structured to make intuiting the learning goals relatively easy, although they are not stated.
The examples help students understand the concepts.

Concerns:

There are some phrases such as “big bang approach” and “run like heck” and “bolts on more function” and others that are not clear. These could have been left out as they add little or could have been phrased more appropriately.
There are no breaks in the material to give students a chance to assess their learning or reflect on what they have read.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The material is easy to understand and easy to follow.
Potential problems and arguments from common situations are presented so readers can understand typical problems they may need to address.
There are links between pages and a site map at the bottom of each page.

Concerns:

It might be helpful to have previous/next chapter links at the top of each page, to simplify navigation, and to remind students where they are in the book.

Other Issues and Comments:: The material is accurate for IT predictive projects, but some of the author's terms are different than industry standard terms. This may not be very clear to students if the instructor uses industry-standard terms. Also, the life cycle presented here for IT projects is a predictive approach, and IT projects today tend to be more adaptive.
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