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Review
[Book of the month!]... Anyone can learn how to work smarter and become twice as productive. --Better Business Focus Magazine, Sep 2009
There is nothing like having someone's writing slap you round the face like a wet herring and you sit there (well, actually laying on the sofa) and you enjoy the experience. Thank you very much Peter Taylor --Ian Swanson - USA - July 2009
For me this book scores 9 out of 10 for entertainment and 8 out of 10 for practical help to fraught project managers. The book is a joy to read, well written, light-hearted, but also informative and helpful. The big question is whether the target audience - the fraught project manager - will be attracted to or turned off by the tongue-in-cheek title. I hope it will be the former, as not only is the book very readable, it contains - as many books of this type - useful check-lists for its various assertions, accompanied by relevant anecdotes. Peter clearly states that his book is not a how-to book on project management, even though he is a chartered PM. It is all about doing less and achieving more. But in the process he does offer many practical guidelines. The fundamental basis of Peter s theory of lazy project management is Pareto s Law, paraphrased to mean doing 20 per cent to achieve 80 per cent of the results rather than the other way round that he feels many project managers do (and I daresay most professionals and managers too). However, Peter does get specific about, for example, putting much more emphasis on the start and end of a project - the thick ends, as he calls them. He also focuses on the power grid , which naturally includes the project sponsor and the project steering group, both of which, he implies, are neglected by many project managers. Teaming gets requisite attention as do crisis handling and communication. As Peter says, reporting is not communicating. Regarding the closing thick end, he cautions that there will be unknown, unknowns made famous by Donald Rumsfeld. Nothing you can do about them, except to try and limit the amount of unknowns by finding out, and by asking. All in all an enjoyable read, with 143 pages including intro, index and several post-script-like closing sections. The main body is around 100 pages. So, not daunting at all. Well done, Peter! --Charles Chang FBCS CITP
There is nothing like having someone's writing slap you round the face like a wet herring and you sit there (well, actually laying on the sofa) and you enjoy the experience. Thank you very much Peter Taylor --Ian Swanson - USA - July 2009
For me this book scores 9 out of 10 for entertainment and 8 out of 10 for practical help to fraught project managers. The book is a joy to read, well written, light-hearted, but also informative and helpful. The big question is whether the target audience - the fraught project manager - will be attracted to or turned off by the tongue-in-cheek title. I hope it will be the former, as not only is the book very readable, it contains - as many books of this type - useful check-lists for its various assertions, accompanied by relevant anecdotes. Peter clearly states that his book is not a how-to book on project management, even though he is a chartered PM. It is all about doing less and achieving more. But in the process he does offer many practical guidelines. The fundamental basis of Peter s theory of lazy project management is Pareto s Law, paraphrased to mean doing 20 per cent to achieve 80 per cent of the results rather than the other way round that he feels many project managers do (and I daresay most professionals and managers too). However, Peter does get specific about, for example, putting much more emphasis on the start and end of a project - the thick ends, as he calls them. He also focuses on the power grid , which naturally includes the project sponsor and the project steering group, both of which, he implies, are neglected by many project managers. Teaming gets requisite attention as do crisis handling and communication. As Peter says, reporting is not communicating. Regarding the closing thick end, he cautions that there will be unknown, unknowns made famous by Donald Rumsfeld. Nothing you can do about them, except to try and limit the amount of unknowns by finding out, and by asking. All in all an enjoyable read, with 143 pages including intro, index and several post-script-like closing sections. The main body is around 100 pages. So, not daunting at all. Well done, Peter! --Charles Chang FBCS CITP
Review
Taylor does something that I have done on my blog and in my own writing - he gives you a chance to cheat. By cheating, I mean that he levels with you, the reader, the busy reader, the lazy reader, and says something like, "look, if you want to get to the bottom line, skip over to the last chapter now. You will miss some stuff but ... you'll get the idea". In fact, he even uses this principle of cheating itself to help explain the Pareto principle - a tactic I thought was particularly ingenious.
--This text refers to the
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If you are new to project management and are looking for books to broaden your knowledge you would be forgiven for thinking that project management is a huge and deeply complex subject. If you are responsible for the next Eurofighter or the 2012 Olympics then you'd be right, however, the majority of us are working on projects of less than 15 people that are under a year long.
This book gets right back to basics in a entertaining yet poignant way to set out the key approaches to successful project management. These have nothing to do with Gantt Charts, probabilistic risk based scheduling, IT systems, Earned value, etc., but everything to do with making sure you focus on the people involved on your project, that you clearly lead from the front, and that you do your homework thoroughly and early so that once your project is shooting along at full speed you are in a position where you can be productively lazy i.e. have time to take the long view over project progress and issues arising, ensuring the best outcome for the stakeholders, and depend on your team to resolve the tactical problems.
It doesn't mean your projects won't have plenty of crisis, but it does mean you will be best placed to deal with them. It's all about people and communicating with them - whatever anyone else tells you!
Well worth a read.
This book gets right back to basics in a entertaining yet poignant way to set out the key approaches to successful project management. These have nothing to do with Gantt Charts, probabilistic risk based scheduling, IT systems, Earned value, etc., but everything to do with making sure you focus on the people involved on your project, that you clearly lead from the front, and that you do your homework thoroughly and early so that once your project is shooting along at full speed you are in a position where you can be productively lazy i.e. have time to take the long view over project progress and issues arising, ensuring the best outcome for the stakeholders, and depend on your team to resolve the tactical problems.
It doesn't mean your projects won't have plenty of crisis, but it does mean you will be best placed to deal with them. It's all about people and communicating with them - whatever anyone else tells you!
Well worth a read.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I really enjoyed the anecdotes and historical references in this book - and especially identified with Peter's experiences in starting out on projects as a brand new PM, along with the subsequent trials and tribulations of engaging key stakeholders and managing the dynamics of the team(s) in getting to work and over the hump of the project.
My take on it, though, is that the book is more about the realistic and emotionally intelligent project manager - and their ability to manage stakeholders and teams - as much as it is to do with knowing the detailed practice of being a PM or assuring delivery. Peter does not hide this latter fact in the book however - which is good. He says in the Introduction that the cold, hard (and dry!) theory is well documented elsewhere for those to discover and swat up on - along with all those wonderful acronyms and terms to learn like "management product" or "deliverable", "PID" or "Project Charter" and so on (except Peter uses the PMP terms, coz that clearly is the methodology he has been trained in). So, in referring to such things, clearly he knows a detailed and structured way to go about it and could teach us on it (if he really, really wanted to) - but he just does not want to tie us up in it
My take on it, though, is that the book is more about the realistic and emotionally intelligent project manager - and their ability to manage stakeholders and teams - as much as it is to do with knowing the detailed practice of being a PM or assuring delivery. Peter does not hide this latter fact in the book however - which is good. He says in the Introduction that the cold, hard (and dry!) theory is well documented elsewhere for those to discover and swat up on - along with all those wonderful acronyms and terms to learn like "management product" or "deliverable", "PID" or "Project Charter" and so on (except Peter uses the PMP terms, coz that clearly is the methodology he has been trained in). So, in referring to such things, clearly he knows a detailed and structured way to go about it and could teach us on it (if he really, really wanted to) - but he just does not want to tie us up in it
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The author is far from lazy but what he is putting out here is a common sense approach to Project Management that focuses on people and not form filling. My copy has already caused a 'buzz' amongst my PM colleagues, I would say it should be mandatory reading for any Manager who has to work in a project based way.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Expanded article
I remember reading this as an article about two years ago and thought at the time it did put forward the good point about ensuring that your project has firm foundations. Read more
Published 2 months ago by whelasc
review of a great book the Lazy Project Manager
After reading this great book I felt obligated to share my thoughts. The book itself is thought provoking and forces you to recognise that you can achieve many things in a day by... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Windsorpuma
basic reminders of what works if you are a PM
It is sometimes the shorter to the point books that spell out in clear text why and what you do for a living. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Marcus Pol
Dull
This feels like a classic case of a great short story turned into a big book. It waffles and ambles through the same point over and over agaim. Read more
Published 8 months ago by R. Somerfield
Very basic and long winded
This book would be better if only the 6% list at the end was published. Nothing more than common sense and a couple of interesting war stories. More like how to be a lazy writer.
Published 10 months ago by James
I heeded the advice
I thought about buying this book but then I thought about the effort required to read it, so I decided not to.
Published 10 months ago by CeeTee
Excellent
Very well written and easy to read - you can't really put it down!
I would highly recommend starters in pm buy this
I would highly recommend starters in pm buy this
Published 12 months ago by L. Hillyer
An enjoyable read
An enjoyable light read with some valid points. Sometimes you want more detail of quite how to achieve some of these things. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Susan
Useful, quick and light read
Fans of the Four Hour Work Week and the 80/20 rule will probably recognise some of the influences on this short likeable book. Read more
Published 16 months ago by The Hamster Factor
Easy reading and straight to the point
I had my doubts about this book, especially as it was being given away in Kindle format! As I began reading, I thought it was some amateur ex-project manager who had thrown... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Carl Pepper
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