Book Review: Making Things Happen

In Making Things Happen we have an “in-your-face” text from Scott Berkun. While case studies are an integral part of any (project) management handbook, the author had used anecdotes and virtualized examples from his extensive experience in the IT giant Microsoft to good effect as a continuous logic and before you know it you have finished reading the book.

The idea that project management is an art is a powerful one and in spite of the availability of many tools and techniques like XP (Extreme Programming) and Agile project management, hard-pressed Project Managers would definitely like the sage advice of people in as much or more difficult situations they face on a daily basis as part of the job responsibilities.

One of the impressive treatments is in the way that the author has brought focus to the various technical terms used in project management on a regular basis. Consider then that the author has explained the differences between the term vision (referring to defining of high-level goals) to team goals (which is the subset of vision and requires a greater explanation) and individual goals (the responsibilities of an individual in the team). While all project managers may have felt the need to jot down their thoughts and share it with others of their species, this is a very practical way to look at the definitions.

One more phrase that I found very interesting is “analysis paralysis”. This is interpreted as the phenomenon where people are analyzing obsessively, in the desperate belief that if one there was enough data, the decision would resolve itself. In real-time this could be due to the inability of a project manager to confront the issue due to possibly lack of enough authority, team-members could exit and hence a better data is required for more options. The delay in this case is something most of us would have seen sometime or the other from people in responsibility in the organizations.

To summarize, the book would make for a pleasant read to the project manager. The exercises at end of each chapter are very useful and going through them almost gives the feeling of being in a real-time management class.