BKSHRPPM.RVW   20090303

"SharePoint for Project Management", Dux Raymond Sy, 2009,
978-0-596-52014-4, U$44.99/C$44.99
%A   Dux Raymond Sy dux@spforpm.com
%C   103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA   95472
%D   2009
%G   978-0-596-52014-4 0-596-52014-X
%I   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
%O   U$44.99/C$44.99 800-998-9938 707-829-0515 nuts@ora.com
%O  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/059652014X/robsladesinterne
  http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/059652014X/robsladesinte-21
%O   http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/059652014X/robsladesin03-20
%O   Audience i- Tech 1 Writing 1 (see revfaq.htm for explanation)
%P   232 p.
%T   "SharePoint for Project Management"

The preface emphasizes that the use of SharePoint could save project
teams up to 2.5% of their working time.  The text is addressed to
project managers, project team leaders, program managers who want to
make sure project managers use SharePoint, information technology
directors who are being pressured to provide SharePoint, and
SharePoint consultants (presumably those who don't know much about
SharePoint).

Chapter one is a general promotion for using SharePoint as a tool to
help with collaborative work.  Few details are provided, and the
examples are poorly explained.  While it starts with discussion of
project structure, chapter two, supposedly about setting up a project
management information system, fails to demonstrate an evaluation of
uses or advantages of the system.  Most of the material consists of
screenshots of SharePoint data entry pages.  More screenshots, in
chapter three, show you how to add some canned forms.  Chapter four
displays user and group administration pages.  Version control and
discussion groups are described in chapter five.  Chapter six reprints
project tracking screens.  Project reporting, in chapter seven, again
shows a bunch of pictures, but very few options.  (What if you want to
use a PERT chart rather than a Gantt chart?)  Chapter eight notes that
you can store files from Microsoft Word, Excel, and Project
applications in SharePoint: there is, of course, no attempt to use
anything else.  Backing up your material by making it a "template" is
recounted in chapter nine.

I'm probably biased.  I've recently been forced to use SharePoint for
a certain project, and the whole experience has been incredibly
painful and frustrating, and has caused enormous delays and problems.

On the other hand, I would be incredibly grateful for a book that did
actually tell you how to solve some of the problems and annoyances
that SharePoint has caused.

One of my students just noticed that me carrying the book into the
classroom, and asked me if it was any good.  Bearing in mind that I am
going to give it away to someone in the class in a few minutes, you
can take your own interpretation of what I told him: it does tell you
how to use some functions in SharePoint.  It doesn't tell you anything
about project management.  It doesn't give you technical information
about SharePoint in any depth at all.  If you are required to set up
something on SharePoint and don't know anything about the program,
this work will get you started.  Period.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 2009    BKSHRPPM.RVW   20090303