Quick Start with Project Management: The Fundamentals

Michael J. Williams
iUniverse (2008)
ISBN 9781440103346
Reviewed by Vicki Landes for Reader Views (9/09)

With over thirteen years of experience, Dr. Michael J. Williams certainly has plenty of background in his field to be considered an expert.  With the release of “Quick Start with Project Management: The Fundamentals,” he provides an overview of proper project management procedures complete with helpful definitions and recommended courses of action. The appalling lack of editing however is so distracting, it takes away from Williams’ useful information and leaves an altogether poor impression of the author’s knowledge of the topic.

“Quick Start with Project Management: The Fundamentals” is a straight-forward guide meant to assist the beginning project manager and provide the necessary basic tools needed to succeed in this line of work.  Relevant and concise, Williams outlines typical project progress from beginning to end with clear direction.  That being said, he skipped an essential step in his own project – editing.  “Quick Start with Project Management” can also be categorized as a gross incomprehension of spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  Regardless of good substance, the sheer amount of mistakes made the book feel amateurish and not credible.  His very first page of text notes, “From personnel (should be ‘personal’) experience, I found that know (should be ‘no’) two projects are alike.”  On his third page of text he gives an acronym but doesn’t explain what that acronym means until page 40.  Even in his short paragraph on Gantt Charts each reference is misspelled, noting them as either ‘Gantt chats’ or ‘grant chart’.  Run-on sentences, incorrect and inconsistent capitalization, gross over-utilization of commas, misuse of punctuation, bullets with no information beside them, and obvious misspellings (“carry’s”?  Come on…) significantly overpowered the text.  Further, the book abruptly ends upon his definitions of project life cycles; no summary, conclusion, wrap-up, or final note to the reader, making it feel unfinished.    

“Quick Start with Project Management: The Fundamentals” definitely needs a trip back to the drawing board.  Author Michael J. Williams sounds like an educated man in the field of project management but his editor hasn’t done any of his material justice.  All in all, very disappointing in what could have potentially been a decent quick-reference book. 

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