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Johanna Rothman helps leaders solve problems and seize opportunities. She consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. She is the author of several books including Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of toon meer Great Management (with Esther Derby). toon minder

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I really wanted to like this book, and it did have some useful information. However, it had too many issues to be really enjoyable.

It was repetitive. It had a large amount of internal cross-referencing, which is good, but each reference was "Section X.Y, Full Section Name, on page N" which got annoying after awhile. There were a number of editing errors, and there were some sections where I doubted editing had been done at all. E.g., the chapter on measurement, which I was really looking forward to, had a bunch of graphs with some description, but no actual explanation of what where the values on the graph came from.

The biggest flaw, however, is that this book set itself up to be a book about project portfolio management for any project life cycle, but it felt like every other section had a "but that won't really work well if you're not using agile" caveat.

Overall, I don't regret having read this, but I cannot recommend it.
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eri_kars | Jul 10, 2022 |
The best part of this book is the practical sections in the back. Full of good templates for doing important things. The beginning of the book attempts to use a narrative style to explain why and when to use the practical sections. The trouble with the narrative style used is that the boss is perfect. Not just really good--perfect. The result being so artificial that it is hard to take the lessons seriously. Still worth the read, just wish it had been presented a little differently.
 
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Skybalon | 2 andere besprekingen | Mar 19, 2020 |
From a technical point of view, Agile project management, and particular methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban are neither new, nor very complex. In fact, one can say fundamental definitions, rules, metrics, and workflows could be easily summarized in a few pages. In other words, no rocket science.

So, why bother with a book that's more than 250 pages? As with all things related to organizing humans, and setting up communication structures, persuading people to move to a different methodology, listening to an expert that has multi-decade experience helps. It especially helps when it is always possible to encounter traps and pitfalls, and when you need to to deal with ambiguity, as well as certainty arising from different aspects of work cultures in different companies.

Is this book perfect? No, not at all. If you want read a more concrete and focused case study [book:Lean from the Trenches|12693642] might be your cup of tea. Or if you want to go into the details of User Stories, then [book:User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development|3856] might serve you better for that particular topic. Nevertheless, I still find Rothman's book valuable for its broad coverage, as well as its explanations on how simple concepts such as "velocity", "burn down charts", "delivering business value", "definition of done" can be misinterpreted and abused.

The chapter on applying an agile approach to workgroups, who are not teams, and who are not software-focused is also valuable, because it shows how the general principles can be applied to cases where it's not about a single team working on a single software product / project.

I also liked her explanations about various aspects of estimation: not everything she says will be easy / compatible with your environment or way of working, but those explanations will give you a good basis for thinking about, and later, managing your estimates.

Finally, as a minor criticism I have to add I wish the publisher / editor took more care to print graphs and charts in full color, instead of grayscale! Pragmatic Bookshelf should take such aspects of book quality more seriously.
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½
 
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EmreSevinc | Mar 11, 2018 |
I'm surprised there aren't more books on this important topic, but it doesn't matter because Johanna offers a system that anyone can learn and use quickly. This is the book to get if you are overwhelmed in your job search and need to get organized.

There are job hunting tactics in here too, but it's her system (and her great writing) that really shines.
 
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jasoncomely | Dec 28, 2017 |

Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk

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Werken
15
Leden
586
Populariteit
#42,792
Waardering
3.9
Besprekingen
8
ISBNs
33

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