Introduction
From time to time I receive books for review and comment, perhaps
because I claim to be a project management "expert". No
doubt we could have a discussion on what constitutes an "expert,
but be that as it may, I try to give the author an honest and objective
assessment. Naturally this assessment is offered from my perspective
of the world of project management.
Occasionally, a book comes my way that I think has particular merit
and is worth published comment. In my view, the PMP Project Management
Professional Study Guide (PMP-SG) is such a book. As the name
implies, the PMP-SG has been written specifically to support project
management practitioners studying for the PMP certification exam
and its basis is the Project Management Institute's ("PMI")
Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge ("PMBOK Guide").
The author, Kim Heldman, has over ten years of project management
experience, most recently involving information technology based
projects. Her authorship is supported by two technical editors,
Claudia Baca, PMP, and Patti Jansen, PMP, both with backgrounds
in the systems-software-technology fields.
I find the PMP-SG particularly interesting because it is a sincere
and significant attempt to "interpret" the Institute's
PMBOK Guide. It enables the material in the guide to be more easily
learned, or perhaps presented in class. However, a review of the
book also provides an opportunity not just to evaluate it, but to
observe how others might view the contents of the PMBOK Guide. This
could lead to ways in which that document might be improved to remove
misinformation and misunderstandings.
The PMP-SG includes a large number of PMP exam type questions for
students to use for practice. The whole book is also repeated on
a CD, convenient for studying on-the-go, provided that you have
your lap top with you of course. The CD also features a testing
engine for evaluating your score and also provides learning flash
cards for PCs and Palm Handhelds as a learning tool. However, I
was disappointed that although the main text is written as a PDF
file, it is not readable on a Mac machine. The book is priced at
around US$60 which struck me as good value — certainly a lot
cheaper than purchasing the list of books hitherto recommended for
the PMP course.
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