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How to Run Successful Projects in Web Time
The author compares the movie industry and high-tech industries with regard to project management. He believes that the way to shorten projects is to find the critical path and often project management software doesn't provide such crucial information.
266 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
1 person is currently reading
2 people want to read
About the author
Fergus O'Connell
72 books38 followersMy mum read Treasure Island to me when I was four and I think that was when I decided to become a writer.
I used to think I’d like to spend all my time writing, but spending all day alone in a room with your imaginary friends isn’t necessarily the healthiest way to pass the time. (It’s easy to see why so many great writers’ best friend has been the whisky bottle!) So I also write books and teach and speak on project management. I’ve written sixteen non-fiction books and had seven novels published. My most recent, The Paradise Ghetto is now in development based on my own screenplay.
I’ve been shortlisted for prizes – the Kerry Ingredients Irish Fiction Prize for my first novel, Call The Swallow; in non-fiction, for my book on common sense, Simply Brilliant which was runner-up in the W H Smith Book Awards. My books have been translated into twenty-five languages.
So far, all my novels have been set during wartime but I don’t think of myself as a war novelist. I write about people caught up in great events and how they try to find love in the most difficult of circumstances.
I’m widowed, have two grown-up children and have lived in lots of places. Currently I’m living in England but that could be about to change.
I used to think I’d like to spend all my time writing, but spending all day alone in a room with your imaginary friends isn’t necessarily the healthiest way to pass the time. (It’s easy to see why so many great writers’ best friend has been the whisky bottle!) So I also write books and teach and speak on project management. I’ve written sixteen non-fiction books and had seven novels published. My most recent, The Paradise Ghetto is now in development based on my own screenplay.
I’ve been shortlisted for prizes – the Kerry Ingredients Irish Fiction Prize for my first novel, Call The Swallow; in non-fiction, for my book on common sense, Simply Brilliant which was runner-up in the W H Smith Book Awards. My books have been translated into twenty-five languages.
So far, all my novels have been set during wartime but I don’t think of myself as a war novelist. I write about people caught up in great events and how they try to find love in the most difficult of circumstances.
I’m widowed, have two grown-up children and have lived in lots of places. Currently I’m living in England but that could be about to change.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 17, 2016
The first book of O'Connell's that was a bit of a let down. It's not a bad book - in fact there's lots of good advice in there, but there were 3 things which counted against it:
1) I felt that I'd read most of it before from him, particularly in "Fast Projects" (which, in fairness, is the newer book)
2) An awful lot of the book (a whole quarter of the pages) is made up of iterations of the "shooting script". And while it's really germane to the book's theme, that seemed to leave not very much book remaining for the money
3) I didn't think it really lived up to its billing of working in "web time". To me, that implies many rapid iterations, rather than the 'take a duration and quarter it' on a single project, which is the way it's presented here.
There is still plenty of interest here - you can see his ideas developing towards Critical Chain (particularly where he talks about the portfolio management towards the end), and the weekly management of the 'shooting script' is getting pretty close to Scrum.
So, worth a read, but you probably don't need to read both this and 'Fast Projects'.
1) I felt that I'd read most of it before from him, particularly in "Fast Projects" (which, in fairness, is the newer book)
2) An awful lot of the book (a whole quarter of the pages) is made up of iterations of the "shooting script". And while it's really germane to the book's theme, that seemed to leave not very much book remaining for the money
3) I didn't think it really lived up to its billing of working in "web time". To me, that implies many rapid iterations, rather than the 'take a duration and quarter it' on a single project, which is the way it's presented here.
There is still plenty of interest here - you can see his ideas developing towards Critical Chain (particularly where he talks about the portfolio management towards the end), and the weekly management of the 'shooting script' is getting pretty close to Scrum.
So, worth a read, but you probably don't need to read both this and 'Fast Projects'.
Displaying 1 of 1 review