E. M. Bennatan
1 Bible on Project Management
If you have never been a project manager, and suddenly you need to learn rules of the game, this is a book I would recommend you to use as a reference material. It is easy to read, has real life examples and various templates related to project management are presented in this book. Highly recommended.
2 We just finished a 2yr project using this text
We (26 person team) just finished a 2+ year project using On Time Within Budget as our process guide. Bottom line: the project came in 7 weeks late -- not bad for a company used to 6 to 12 month schedule overruns. We'll do better next time with more experience on the methods described in the book. Advice to others: the chapters on estimation, standards, and risk analysis are great. The chapters on software teams, quality assurance and testing are good pointers to what we needed to know, but we also used other books on these subjects to fill in more details that we needed. Most everyone liked the epilogue (pulling it all together). This book helped to pull us out of the dark ages into modern software project management. Strongly recommended!
3 Good reference even for non-software managers
I don't usually write reviews but I was prompted to do this one because I strongly disagree with a preceding review. I am an EE senior manager and software development had always been a mystery to me until I got hold of On Time, Within Budget. I particularly found the following chapters helpful: Chapter 1 which includes reasons for project success and failure, Chapter 2 on risk management and how to reduce the cost of risk events, Chapter 5 on the management of software engineers, and most especially the Epilogue on pulling it all together, which provides a great overall perspective.
This book is full of real-life examples; it was clearly written by someone who has been down in the trenches. This adds credibility to the methods described.
I have learned a lot from the book and I use it as a reference regularly.
4 Probably best for a techie moving into a management rolw
As a previous reviewer wrote, I was truly dismayed at the level of technical expertise tha the readers of this text are assumed to have. The book definitely contains several gems, but non-technical managers would be better off finding other sources that are more geared for their skill base.
For example, I enjoyed Chapter 9 which described the major development standards on a relatively high level. However, the exercises at the end of the chapter dealt into the intricacies of the standards, which was not a level of detail achieved within the chapter text.
Also, many of the other exercises within the chapters seem more related to system design than to schedule and budget estimation, which I assumed would be the crux of the book.
So, this book may be best read by technical personnel moving into a management position, but for non-technical personnel I would recommend finding another source of information.
5 This book was adopted as the standard text by our company
I used On Time Within Budget at a post grad course last year on software project management (we switched mid-course from the 2nd edition to the 3rd). After the course I brought it to the attention of our Software Process Office at our company and in July it was adopted as the standard text to be used by all our project managers. In the last 4 months we have introduced risk analysis, standard status reporting, and stepwise estimation. We are planning to start preparing for an SEI assessment early next year. Everyone's guide is the Bennatan book (we are also now using the IEEE standards and the SEI CMM guideline books).
I don't think our company would have taken all this on without this book. It doesn't only suggest what to do it also explains why.
6 Misguiding
I had considered using this book in my Software Project Management class but have decided to have my students read others and stay away from it. On Time Within Budget positions managers as handling mostly technical decisions. Alas, many of these issues (to give just one example, selecting a client-server environment, section 7.4) have little to do with people and should be handled by the chief architect. Most projects where the manager has marginalized the architect or has been trying to wear the architect's hat fail miserably. If you want to become a good manager, look for books that tell you how to deal with peopleware. Get the right people, make sure that they can work at their best, and leave the technical decisions to the ones who can handle them best.
7 Excellent Reference Text
This is a great reference book -- I look up examples and methods regularly. I have been managing software development for several years and this is the first real project management book I have found that isn't full of sky-high theories. There are many down-to-earth ideas that I have implemented successfully. Risk Analysis (chapter 2) is a must, and Organizational Excellence (Chapter 10) should be read by every software organization (especially the opening anecdote). I really like the common sense epilogue -- If you don't do anything else do this. A classic.
8 Excellent S/W Project Management Book
I had been using the second edition of On Time Within Budget but this third edition is a major improvement. Especially the epilog that gave me a great summary of how to implement the theories in the book. The book is excellent as a reference source and includes almost all the information I need to run a software project. I found the summaries at the end of each chapter to be a great help. The section on estimates is one of the most useful I have read anywhere. Only criticism is that it should be hardcover.
