Book review: Delivering Exceptional Project Results

Another book about Project Management, written by Jamal Moustafaev (president and founder of Thinktank consulting, among other achievements). I bought this book back when EPM 2010 was brand new. The reason why I bought the book was simple; I was looking for a book that had more information on Portfolio management and particularly on Portfolio Selection. This was because the Project Server 2010 version has the portfolio selection module imbedded out of the box, and that was a separate product in earlier versions. I wanted to read up on Portfolio management because I thought it would become the next big thing in the Project Server world and I knew nothing about it. And the sub title triggered me to get this book: A practical guide to project selection, scoping, estimation and management. Sounds promising right?

———————-Update june 2015————

I have added some free content related to the book on the TPC_OneDrive, go have a look, and read the “read me” file please.

———————————————————-

Now you might ask, but EPM 2010 is old news Erik, why review the book now? Well two reasons actually, I got sidetracked with clients that weren’t interested in Portfolio Management yet, and I didn’t have this blog back in 2011 when I bought the book.

Resource portfolio

I have reread the book because Project Online and Project Server 2013 also include the option to do portfolio selection in a very early stage. I might do a post about the Portfolio module this year, please send me any user cases if you have them. I would love to hear your stories.

The book was really enjoyable, it had 3 distinct sections related to Project Management, Scope definition and finally Portfolio management. Regarding the subject of your interest you can read just the part related to that subject and be done with the book, no questions asked. Jamal Moustafaev has a ton of experience managing projects and portfolio’s for companies all across the globe. He uses this experience to build compelling case studies that tie in nicely with the subject within chapters of the book.

Furthermore there is a, almost novel like, historical reference case at the beginning of each chapter: About second world war plane building for instance. The Curious Case of Arthur Wellesley (chapter 2, about the need for project management) was especially to my liking, I just love trivia :-).

Now if you are uncertain if you should get the book, here is a video presentation by Jamal himself about his book:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLWl3NxgEW4]

I give the book a 4,5 stars.

One thought on “Book review: Delivering Exceptional Project Results”

Comments are closed.