Project Decisions: The Art and Science Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Project Decisions: The Art and Science? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Project Decisions: The Art and Science. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Project Decisions: The Art and Science ReviewThe main problem with many decision analysis books is that they are too academic and are intended for people with some operations research and management science background. "Project Decisions" is written for much broader audience. There is very little math in this book. Instead, the book is full of real-life project examples (e.g., NASA's X-33 single stage to orbit launch system and New Horizon mission to Pluto, ITER thermonuclear reactor, Toyota Prius hybrid car, new Bay bridge design and construction in San Francisco) and stories based on popular movies (e.g., Home Alone, Ocean's 11, Armageddon). As an interesting and entertaining introduction to the whole topic, the book starts off with a simple judgment test to help you assess you decision making skills.
"Project Decisions: The Art and Science" is not an ordinary decision analysis book. It is a book for project managers who don't use decision analysis because they are unaware of decision analysis techniques and tools. Each part of the book describes a phase of the decision analysis process: decision framing, modeling, quantitative decision analysis, implementation monitoring and reviews.
The book pays significant attention to risk management and risk analysis tools and techniques. Both quantitative and qualitative risk analysis techniques are described. The book includes separate chapters on sensitivity analysis, decision tree and value of information analysis, Monte Carlo simulations, and Event chain methodology.
One of the most important and often overlooked areas of project management is related to psychology or judgment and decision-making. The authors introduce the basic principles of behavioral branch of the decision analysis theory. They dedicate separate chapters to decision-making in groups, reviews and evaluation of decisions, multi-criteria decision-making and other important aspects of decision analysis.
Project Decisions: The Art and Science OverviewProject management is the art of making the right decisions. To be effective as a project manager, you must know how to make rational choices in project management, what processes can help you to improve these choices, and what tools are available to help you through the decision-making process. Project Decisions: The Art and Science is an entertaining and easy-to-read guide to a structured project decision analysis process. This valuable text presents the basics of cognitive psychology and quantitative analysis methods to help project managers make better decisions. Examples that portray different projects, real-life stories, and popular culture will help readers acquire the essential knowledge and skills required for effective project decision-making. Readers will be able to: -Understand psychological pitfalls related to project management -Establish a creative business environment in their organization -Identify project risks and uncertainties -Develop estimates of project time and cost based on an understanding of human psychology -Perform basic quantitative and qualitative risk and decision analysis -Use event chain methodology in managing projects -Communicate the results of decision analysis to decision-makers -Review project decisions and perform adaptive project management -Establish a project decision analysis process in their organization PLUS Test your own judgment through a quiz that examines your intuition!

Want to learn more information about Project Decisions: The Art and Science?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Pandora's Box: Social and Professional Issues of the Information Age Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Pandora's Box: Social and Professional Issues of the Information Age? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Pandora's Box: Social and Professional Issues of the Information Age. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Pandora's Box: Social and Professional Issues of the Information Age ReviewIt is a good book and it is highly recommended for anyone that is able to read whether he/she has contact with the computer or now. The social issues raised are all encompassing.Pandora's Box: Social and Professional Issues of the Information Age Overview

Want to learn more information about Pandora's Box: Social and Professional Issues of the Information Age?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results ReviewSome months ago I completed a Project Management course for which the textbook was the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) by the Project Management Institute (PMI). As I went through the 9 PM knowledge areas, 5 process groups, 44 processes and the countless tools and techniques in each process, I could not help thinking that something was missing. While the PMBOK does a good job covering project management methodologies, it barely talks about the people skills that Project Managers need for success. Anthony Mersino's "Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers" does an excellent job bridging this gap in the discipline of Project Management.
This book is broken into four parts. It starts with an introduction to Emotional Intelligence, a term that Mersino defines as "knowing and managing our own emotions and those of others for improved performance". The remaining parts deal with Self-management, Building project stakeholder relationships and Using Emotional Quotient (EQ) to lead project teams. To me, the highlight of the book was Mersino's Emotional Intelligence Framework for Project Management This builds upon and customizes (for project management) Daniel Goleman's Framework of Emotional Competencies.
The Emotional Intelligence Framework for Project Management has five domains:
1. Self-awareness
2. Self-management
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management
5. Team leadership
Mersino has over 20 years of project management experience and teaches courses at Northwestern University. Overall, this book is well researched and well presented. In addition, it is an excellent compilation of resources on emotional intelligence for project management. It is a great addition to every Project Manager's book-shelf.Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results OverviewIn order to run projects successfully, project managers need to master more than the requisite technical knowledge. The more complex the project, the more significant their interpersonal skills become to achieving a successful outcome. Without the people skills necessary to lead effectively, even the most carefully orchestrated project can quickly fall apart. Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers introduces readers to the basic concepts of emotional intelligence and shows how to apply them to their project goals. Readers will learn how to: Set the tone and direction for the project Communicate more effectively Improve listening skills Create a positive work environment Motivate, coach, and mentor team members Productively handle stress, criticism, and blame And more. Complete with checklists and self-assessments, this handy guide enables project managers to apply these important skills to their projects right away.

Want to learn more information about Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Becoming Agile: ...in an imperfect world Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Becoming Agile: ...in an imperfect world? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Becoming Agile: ...in an imperfect world. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Becoming Agile: ...in an imperfect world ReviewBecoming Agile by Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky describes how to start your journey to start agile development. The target audience for this book are people who are just starting to look at Agile development and currently have issues. However, personally, I would not recommend this book. The book contains recommendations that I would personally not follow (I'm not that they wouldn't work) and a better alternative might be Mike Cohns new book "Succeeding with Agile" which will be published later this year.
The book contains eight parts and it follows one case study of "Acme Media" throughout the book. Acme media is implementing a small pilot project using agile development. The first chapter of the book describes agile development, the agile manifesto and introduces the background of the case study. The second chapter in the book covers the start, that is the preparation work that the authors recommend. Chapter 4 in this part discusses a assessment test for assessing your agility. The authors recommend to use the test and based on that decide what practices to start with. Chapter 6 describes one of the their key recommendations, which is to form a "core team" which defines the agile process to be used by the organization.
Part three describes the real kick-off of the development. Chapter 10 covers a feasibility phase where the a smaller team will assess if the project is even feasible and after that will be a "gate" or a go/no-go moment so that the project can be killed early. It suggests creating a feasibility study guide to do your feasibility and the authors provide some examples. Chapter 11 talks about creating the initial agile pilot team.
Part four is called "populating the product backlog" where the authors start describing their variant on user stories called "feature cards." It wasn't clear to me why the authors decided to re-invent or rename other agile practices. The chapter describes creating the feature cards and putting them in the product backlog. Chapter 13 discusses the prioritization and chapter 14 the estimation of the features (which seems to be the wrong order to me, but the authors insist on not wasting estimation time). The chapter explains planning poker and story point (wonder why they are not called feature points...)
Part five then discusses the planning (or scheduling) of the project and fills all the requirements to the iterations. Chapter sixteen then starts with the iteration planning of the first iteration. The authors suggest first some modeling and than task breakdown and already doing task assignments. They not that people often recommend differently, but then they assume that it because in these teams "everyone can do everything." It feels like the authors think it is either pre-assigning all tasks OR everyone can do everything... and there is no middle way.
Part six discusses the iteration itself and covers some of the agile engineering practices, but only on a somewhat shallow level. The part starts with chapter 17 which still recommends to run an iteration 0 (even though their project has only 2 iterations!!) Part seven discusses change and adaptation. Chapter 20 describes the adaptations of Acme and why they did it. Interestingly enough, the authors suggest a "adapt week" between their iterations. Then chapter 21 describes the final delivery.
Part eight, the final part, describes how the core group can take the result of the pilot and try to roll out agile in the whole company.
Why I wouldn't recommend the book? There are two main reasons for this. The first is that the book doesn't feel well researched at all and the language is somewhat too 'popular.' For example: page 6 about the Agile manifesto talks about "a group of authors writing a document." Unless you interpret 'authors' very broadly, this is just not true. On page 33 the authors describe weaknesses of Scrum. I'm probably not the most neutral person about this, but still the sentence "Scrum doesn't want specialists" seems like a really odd conclusion and seems to me simply untrue. Another example, on page 248 the authors equate exploratory testing to "company-wide bug stomp." They claim "exploratory testing tries to make sure the software doesn't accidentally do things it isn't supposed to do." If I simply google the internet, then the definitions of exploratory testing are quite different. As a final example, in chapter 22 on retrospectives, the authors do not at all refer to any of the retrospectives techniques described in other places (like the popular "Agile Retrospectives" book).
The second reason why I wouldn't recommend the book is because I personally disagree with a lot of the recommendations done by the authors. These are too numerous to all mention, but to just pick a couple. Having a separate team define the 'process' for the Agile team seems odd to me. Doing a pilot project with only 2 iterations is somewhat short from my perspective. Especially as things like velocity aren't that useful on projects like that. The iteration 0 and the adapt week are things I wouldn't recommend and certainly not on a 2 iteration project. The description of retrospectives are certainly not how I would do them myself. The focus on engineering practices is somewhat shallow. And the list goes on and on. Fair enough, this might be just my opinion against their opinion, but because of this, I would personally not recommend this book.
I decided to go for two stars. Three stars would mean the book does what it is suppose to do, and I don't think it does. One star would be too low as the idea of the book is good. Also, I like the way the authors have build up their case study and the way they describe a project based on their own experiences. The book is not all bad or useless, just not the book I would recommend. Therefore decided to go for two stars.
Becoming Agile: ...in an imperfect world OverviewMany books discuss Agile from a theoretical or academic perspective. Becoming Agile takes a different approach and focuses on explaining Agile from a case-study perspective. Agile principles are discussed, explained, and then demonstrated in the context of a case study that flows throughout the book. The case study is based on a mixture of the author's real-world experiences.
Becoming Agile also focuses on the importance of adapting Agile principles to the realities of your environment. In the early days of Agile, there was a general belief that Agile had to be used in all phases of a project, and that it had to be used in its purest form. Over the last few years, reputable Agile authorities have begun questioning this belief: We're finding that the best deployments of Agile are customized to the realities of a given company.

Becoming Agile discusses the cultural realities of deploying Agile and how to deal with the needs of executives, managers, and the development team during migration. The author discusses employee motivation and establishing incentives that reward support of Agile techniques.


Want to learn more information about Becoming Agile: ...in an imperfect world?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software ReviewThis invaluable review of the Processes & Business Benefits of User Interface/User Experience Design, provides so much unique and hard won insight into the process of developing superior user interfaces, the goals of users and the business, and in quantifying the benefits of UX design that I can only award it an outstanding Five Star review. One observation, that full engagement with the true goals of users is the end purpose of UI Design, is in itself worth the cost of this excellent book. But in spite of my viewing this book as revolutionary and offering outstanding and unique insights into what User Experience is, how to achieve it and what its benefits are, I do have one major criticism of this otherwise excellent book, its narrative approach and careful explication of its arguments on what the team at "Effective UI" lead to step by step discovery of these insights; there doesn't appear to be a top-down structure allowing for easy browsing of the book; it must be studied at length. Also, an experienced student of Interaction Design and User Experience cannot easily find what the new insights of this book are at a single glance, or find its prescription for a particular step of the design process.
This is an excellent and insightful book on UI Design and User Experience based on the consulting experience of a leading firm in this industry. But the book narrating their experience must be studied, it is difficult to browse.
--Ira Laefsky
MSE, MBA IT & HCI ResearcherEffective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software Overview
People expect effortless, engaging interaction with desktop and web applications, but producing software that generates enjoyable user experiences is much harder than many companies anticipate. With Effective UI, you'll learn proven user-experience strategies that will satisfy your clients and customers, drive business value, and increase brand strength.

This book shows you how to capture the collaborative and cooperative spirit among designers, engineers, and management required for building engaging software. You'll also learn valuable methods for maintaining focus throughout the process -- whether you're a product manager who needs a clear roadmap, a developer or designer looking for guidance and advocacy, or a businessperson who wants to understand and manage user-experience software initiatives.

Learn how to build software that will:

Generate engaging and interactive experiences between consumers and businesses, or between businesspeople and their information systems
Account for how people work with, think about, and consume information
Establish a richer means of collaboration and communication
Reduce frustration by streamlining complex tasks and creating processes that are more intuitive
Distinguish products, services, and brands to create a competitive advantage
Create scalable systems that adapt to changing user needs and behaviors


Want to learn more information about Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...