2008-10-15 Too shallow

A pretty useless book. Tries to cover everything, and by doing so is too shallow in nearly every topic. Am not sure the author understands the topic, her examples of work breakdown structures (WBS) are simply wrong (the link to Wikipedia she provides presents WBS infinitely better).

At times the author is hilarous. What about the following (p100): "The most prevalent unit of measure for a project schedule is days. In a time-critical system (i.e. human-rated, where life and death is often at stake), it is quite possible that hours and even minutes might need to be used as units"

The author also borrows heavily from other sources (with acknowledgements of these sources). At times this deteriorates into lists and tables without much added value from the author.

The author's interpretation of 'project' is rather narrow: a project develops software. With this interpretation she misses that projects are expected to deliver a tangible business change, and that for a project to be successful the scope should be wider than 'developing software' only.

The examples given are haphazerd, and the author switches even within the same paragraph from one example to another, without finishing her point with the first example. Rather annoying (see for example p107 which starts with an example from the transportation industry, and then switches to the Dog E-Doctor System).

In short, a very high-level introduction to the topic, useful for the non-initiated who wants a quick introduction to the topic.