Book Review: Making Things Happen

Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management, by Scott Berkun, is easily the most practical book I have ever read about project management. One of the real strengths is the lack of dependency on any particular methodology, and instead a deep treatment on the thought processes and collaboration that leads to project success. This book covers all areas of the project life cycle, and is applicable to any particular approach or processes you may follow.

Berkun has a very easy tone in the book, never stretching for frivolous words or ego-based examples. Reading the book often felt like a successful friend was sharing his hard-won insights and experiences. He finds a way to encourage you while also challenging you to improve.

He develops great explanations of three perspectives on projects: business, technical, and customer. Each of these views can provide valuable questions that should be answered when developing your project plans. Finding the right balance between these sometimes competing needs will strengthen your project team and improve your chances of success.

Throughout the book, he often focuses on questions that need to be considered, and emphasizes the importance of digging beyond the surface answers to gain deeper insights. I especially liked the chapter Where Ideas Come From, where he explores a variety of categories of questions that can be helpful when exploring ideas. His explanation of “focusing questions” was particularly thought provoking for me, and I have tried to ingrain some of those ideas into my own approach to problem solving and teamwork.

Another great chapter is How To Make Good Decisions, where he again explores a great series of questions that will be helpful in evaluating decisions in a variety of contexts. I also appreciated his comments on reviewing decisions after they have been made. This kind of review is easy to skip, with project emphasis tending to be more forward-looking. By taking a little time to reflect in something of a mini post-mortem, later tasks and decisions are likely to be better informed. 

This book has provided me a wealth of ideas about how to approach the many aspects of project management. I have a number of small post-it flags stuck on various pages to mark topics and ideas that stood out to me as I read the book. In reality, I could have marked just about every page. Regardless of where I am in a project, Scott Berkun’s work continues to stimulate my thinking.