More reviews coming in - it’s fun to read these - hopefully I’ll see more:

“This is one of the more practical books on project management that I’ve had the chance to cover. The writing style is also less formal and a bit more “real life” than most. You actually feel like you’re talking with the author instead of being “talked to”
- From Duffberts Musings

“This is in fact a down-to-earth book about a tough job, the management of large, complex projects, with an emphasis on high tech and software… this eminently practical book will be of use to anybody who wants advice on approaching serious project management professionally.”
From Netsurfer Digest

“The book is very broad, and I think it would be reasonably useful for people involved in any team project situation, whether they’re a manager or a player”
- From Tim Hatch

“The book is imprinted by a very pragmatic view: you will learn the difficult art of getting things done, figthing a very wide range of different obstacles. The book is focused on young IT Managers, but can be a valuable help for team leaders and senior architects too. .. Rating: 8 of 10″
- From SIforge.org

“I often ask the question: ‘Have you read McConnell’s work?’ Those interviewees who do not know who McConnell is, or cannot even name the books are removed from the shortlist. I would like to think that one year from now I will be able to ask: ‘Have you read The Art of Project Management?’ Finally, we have a book that doesn’t just teach project management, it teaches the art of project management… it is a portable book of common sense – it should be required reading for those folks on a project and anybody who has interaction with the project team, e.g. upper management, sponsors, CEOs, CIOs, information providers and even customers. Overall book rating: 5/5″
From Craig Murphy, for Scottishdevelopers.com, See his full chapter by chapter review

There are also ten more reviews up now at amazon.com

Please let me know if you’ve seen other reviews out there, or if you’ve written your own.

Posted in The Art of PM book, artofpm reviews | 1 Comment »

Steven Makofsky of furrygoat is just getting into the book, and hasn’t fallen asleep quite yet.

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For kicks i’ve been tracking the amazon ranking # for the art of pm. For most of this week it’s been hovering below 1000. Right now it’s in the 400s. Which I understand to be fantastic. 2o minutes into the marathon, I’m out of breath, but still on camera and waving.

I’m trying to figure out if there’s some way to map rankings to sales figures. I mean, even the NYT bestseller list is entirely misleading. If Book X is in the top twenty for two weeks, but drops quickly after a month, its total sales will be less than a book that never makes the NYT bestseller, but hovers at the equivalent of a top 50 or 100 ranking for years.

So the same goes for the amazon ranking. It’s hard to map that number to actual sales, and it’s hard to connect the ranking number to book quality. The best book in a category is unlikely to stay highly ranked in hourly sales figures, but would score very well in lifetime sales ranking for its category.

For example, Mythical Man month is currently ranked #1386, but is the best known book on software project management ever. Its lifetime sales per category is probably #1.

Now amazon does track per category top 20 lists - but what i can’t figure out is its correlation to the master amazon rankings. I’ve seen the #5 book in a category have a higher amazon sales ranking than the #2. Not sure if this is a timing issue - those stats are updated at different times, or if there’s some funky math in what constitutes a sale in a given category.

And of course, the bigger question that renders all this number watching useless: what percentage of total book sales are through Amazon? I have no idea. I suspect it’s higher for tech-sector books, but what is the baseline? Do the amazon trends jive with other online sellers? physical in store purchases? I haven’t found anyone who’s written about or researched this. All these questions are a big motivator to not spend much time watching little numbers go up and down.

Posted in The Art of PM book | 4 Comments »

Ok - here’s my notes from my first radio interview experience. I was on air for about 15 minutes on the 5/22/2005 Business of Success radio show.

1. Calm down. If you listen carefully to people that speak well on air, they speak slooowly. They hit all the syllables. And more importantly, they sound calm or in control. My first 10 minutes were not calm, and I didn’t sound particularly in control. I smoothed out later on, but had the interview only been 5 minutes… I thought I’d be fine here since I’m a good public speaker and have tons of experience. The difference here was control: I wasn’t the host, I was the guest. I didn’t have my hand on the throttle, Alan did.
2. Practice. Whenever friends have job interviews, I always offer to do a practice interview with them. Well, my wife offered to do a practice radio interview with me, which I declined. With a “I don’t need that kind of help” shrug. Well, in retrospect, it would have helped a ton. It would have forced me to run through things and recognize mistakes or bad habits. Since I didn’t do this, the live interview now serves as the place I learned from.
3. Know the 3 things you want to say. The questions I got were open enough that I had lots of room to decide how to respond. If I were smarter, I would have related things back to the book, or back to the 3 or 5 key things I wanted to try and say. I’d have been ready to say 5 second, 30 second and 1 minute versions of those key things. I’m not suggesting spinning or manipulating questions: only that in this case there was plenty of room to answer questions and hit key things I wanted to hit. (This would have been a good thing to practice).
4. Listen to other interviews. I listened to 3 or 4 other interviews from the same show just to get a feel for Alan Rothman (the show’s host) and take notes on how other people handled the interview. Especially if you do a practice run, it’s easy to catch good and bad things in other interviews.
5. Know the format and how much time you have. I was lucky to have a 15 minute slot all to myself. It’s typical to get shorter slots, or be part of panel or talk show on some other specific topic. Either way, make sure you know exactly how much time you will have, whether you’re sharing the time with others, who is interviewing you, and what the focus of the interview will be. Use this to help practice.
6. It goes by very fast. I expected this but still felt it all went by very quickly. This is another reason to practice - to help it seem familiar and slower. The commercial breaks, as annoying to listeners as they are, were great for me. It gave me a chance to calm down, consider what I’d said, and what adjustments I needed to make. Make sure you know how many commercial breaks there will be and how long they are.
7. You are on your own. One surprising thing in being interviewed was how little guidance there is. Alan was kind enough to chat with me the day before which helped me know what to expect. But the day of had no prep at all: you call in a few minutes before you go on, then you hear him announce your name, and then before you know it, it’s all over.
8. Consider what you are representing. Many of the better interviews I listened to were focused on one of 3 things: a company/service, a product (e.g. book), a person (CEO of JetBlue, rock star, etc.). Some people who were on because of their book spent more time talking about their company/service. Others went the other way. I think next time I need to be clearer on what the audience value proposition is: the book? me as a consultant? me as a person and my experiences? A combination of these things? Why are they not going to turn the dial? And within the things they’re interested in, what i can say that serves my own interests as well? I don’t have answers to these questions, but they’ll be what I’m thinking about before the next interview.
9. You are on your own. One surprising thing in being interviewed was how little guidance there is. Alan was kind enough to chat with me the day before which helped me know what to expect. But the day of had no prep at all: you call in a few minutes before you go on, then you here him announce your name, and then before you know it, it’s all over.
10. Ignore host responsibility. This is a minor one, but 2/3rds in I stop myself short because I heard the commercial cue music. Big Mistake. First, you can talk over the cue for a few seconds. Second, it’s not my job. The host will interupt when it’s time - because I cut myself off there’s a good 2 seconds of dead air for no reason. Let the host manage the show and you - keep going.
11. Relax. . Even though all the other bullets are super analytical, none of the analysis matters if I’m not relaxed enough to make use of it. Personality counts, and I probably can’t be me if I’m doing interview calculus in my head while trying to carry a conversation. So practice a few times, consider the above list, but on the day just let what happens happens and try to have fun.
12. No ums, or other bad speaking habits. This comes straight from any guide to public speaking. Watch out for bad habits you use when speaking under pressure. Common ones are: using um, like, or well, between words. Repeating the same introduction or endings to sentences such as “In other words” or “.. of that nature.” Sluring, slang, absences of any pauses are other common bad habits. The only way to get rid of them is practice.

If you listened in and had any comments or advice for me, feel free to leave it here.

Posted in On Tour, On writing, The Art of PM book | 5 Comments »

Here’s the first online book review I’ve found, from 43 folders’s Merlin Mann:.

Where so many Project Management books fetishize GANTT charts, waterfalls, and abstract planning methods, most of Berkun’s book lives much further down in the trenches—where misunderstandings happen, dates slip, and bad decisions threaten to derail your project. The book is full of really practical advice on handling these challenges in the real world. And, yes, I really wish it had existed 7 or 8 years ago.

Full review here

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The business of sucess radio program is interviewing me on Sunday to talk about the book - They’re syndicated nationwide. I’ve been on TV once before in 1997 (don’t try to find the footage - its been happily destroyed) - but this is my first radio thing.

I’m the second guest on this archive recording of the 5/22 show (mp3)
(jump ahead to 27:35 if you want to skip the first guest, Joe Vitale author of “The Attractor factor“)

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My multi-day interview on the Well is winding down - but the transcript is now publically available. Lots of stuff about my thoughts on XP (Extreme programming), where teams go wrong, and the important things about leading teams that don’t often make it into books.

A conversation with Scott Berkun

Thanks to David Edelstein for making it happen.

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On Thursday May 12th I Left Macromedia at 1:35pm. Just enough time to make back down to San Jose by 3pm.

I’d been to Adobe once before - when they were in their old offices back in 1994. I interviewed for a software engineer job that I didn’t get. But I still have the nice black and red adobe mug they gave me, my sole prize for the two days of interviews I had.

Anyway - Adobe is headquartered in two towers (hmmm) on Park Avenue, San Jose. When I saw them, and the adobe logo on top of the 20th floor, I sad “wow”. By far the biggest most archiectually dominant building I’d seen on the tour.

Katja, my most excellent host, met me downstairs and we headed up to the conference room. Highlight of the walk up was the gorgeous basketball court on a large patio between the towers. Awesome (although it seemed like a windtunnel - not a place for an afternoon picnic - long range gamers would suffer).

At the talk: spoke to a mid-sized group of 30 or 40 people. Met Tarjin, a usability engineer I knew back at Microsoft, who’s now at Adobe. By 3:05pm we were underway. The group was fun - most receptive to jokes on the whole tour (or maybe my jokes were better? who knows). Talked about schedules and teams, and how to make things go well on a timeline. Got a few questions about design process and managing ideas on a timeline, and I pulled out some diagrams from Chapter 6.

I said goodbye to the adobe folks, and finally headed back to my hotel and my first dip in the swimming pool that’d been teasing me throughout the book tour.

Thanks to everyone that came out to see me - check out the book and let me know what you think.

Posted in On Tour, The Art of PM book | 1 Comment »

Made two mistakes: 1) left power cable at Google. 2) Left lights on rental car.

The loss of the power cable made every talk a Mission impossible type adventure - certainly helped prevent me from lingering self indulgently on slides (it’d be fun to make this a rule at conferences - take too long, your laptop shuts down automatically).

The dead battery in the rental car at least stopped me from worrying about the power cable.

I had thought I’d get up early Thursday morning, stop by Google and retrieve the cable, but the lack of anything resembling power in the battery of my car made this impossible. Tip: the extra money for hertz is worth it. They had a service person there to give me a jump in about 45 minutes (btw: the Sheraton folks refused to help - “against policy”. To jumpstart a car? They have a policy for that?)

I managed to get to Macromedia, on Townsend st. in San Francisco early - walked around. Odd neighborhood - semi-industrial, but with mostly high end designer furniture and home decoration stores. The one lunch spot I found didn’t open till 11am, so I went for a walk around. The Macromedia building stands out on the street - it’s a beautiful brick building with steel awning over the front stairs.

Inside I used their self-service visitor terminal to create an id, including a photo (taken from said terminal). This was the coolest id creation thingy I’d see on the whole tour. Everyone, except Sun, had systems like this one, but the whole self-photo thing was unique to Macromedia.

I was in a small room near the lobby - but we filled it. About 30 or 35 people, mostly program managers, with some documentation, engineering and design/usability folks. The group was great - lively, asked lots of questions, and made the session more interactive than average. During Q&A. which went for a good 25 minutes, someone asked the perenial PM question “Is your sock drawer organized by color?”, To which, after faking offense at the question, I answered “I don’t have a sock drawer”, and left it at that. How mysterious.

After grabbing a cookie from the pile of foodstuffs for the talk at the back of the room, I thanked Cecilia, my host, for having me, and headed off down to San Jose, for Adobe - my last stop on the tour.

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Once again, my book is taking its 5 seconds of questionable length fame with a smile - Currently in the top 5 for Amazon’s software project management books

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Just for fun, purely for the sake of experiment, I invited everyone I spoke with out to drinks at a nearby pub. Folks I knew were around, Matt, Chad, and some others, I asked personally, but for the rest - I left it to chance. At each gig I’d announce early that anyone interested in the book, in me, or some free beer, should head on down. The big question was who would show? Anyone? I prepared myself for drinking alone (not difficult for most writerly minded individuals). And besides, there was NBA playoffs to watch, and I could always annoy the bartenders by showing them my book every 10 seconds.

About 12 people showed over the course of a few hours. Given I’d never met most of these people before, I was pleased. None of them tried to sell me Amway goods or convince me that the end was near. The conversation and beer was good. I’d definitely do something like this again next time.

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I arrived at Yahoo’s building D at 3:30 - right on time for my 4pm talk. Everything inside was wonderfully purple and yellow, including the big oversized comfy recliner in the waiting area. I explored the Yahoo store in the lobby, looking for a pair of purple and yellow boxers, while waiting for my host Bob Baxley, to arrive. I knew Bob from helping with his fine book on web applications, but this is the first time I’d meet him in person.

I spoke in a small room to about 25 or 30 project managers, designers and other folks. Met Chris (?), someone who worked in Microsoft’s Mac group, and knew me from back in the day. Always fun to meet people - never know how you know someone. Always funny to throw names and see which ones jog a memory and which ones get blank stares.

I did the schedules and lies talk, and it went fine. Finished in about an hour with another 30 minutes or so for questions. The rule of thumb: if folks stay for Q&A, you did ok. Well, most of the folks stayed (The offer of free books helps I suppose).

Book tour score: 4 talks down, 2 to go. One box of books left.

Posted in On Tour, On writing, The Art of PM book | 1 Comment »