The Tactical Guide for Building a PMO Paperback – August 30, 2012

This book set and met my expectations quite well. It's clear from the start that this is a practical, step by step guide for building a PMO, not a book on theory. It methodically steps through the thought process that goes into building a well formed PMO. As I read I found I continually questioned what was necessary for a PMO in my organization. As Bill often points out, too often PMO's feel the need to overburden PM's with process or produce templates or reports because they feel they are supposed to, rather than questioning "what problem is this PMO here to solve?". The suggestions made in the book for aligning your PMO to a business need and then continuing to market the services the PMO provides in support of that need were truly refreshing. The book provides tools such as templates for capturing critical decision points, sample build schedules, etc. Those tools and templates help to encapsulate the thoughts you have while reading into inputs for the design and build process.As the methods could be used for enhancing an existing PMO, as well as building one from scratch, I would recommend this book to any PMO Manager or Executive Sponsor of a PMO.

Amazing book and a must have for everyone working in the project management space. But it lost a star for the lousy small print. Couldn't read the text or the diagrams, and had to buy an electronic version.

This book is indeed the tactical step by step guide for those who are new to and even with some experience in) project management.It covers all grounds and pay attention to details. I have gone through it and found that it addressed many different scenarios I have seen over the years in three Big 500 companies that I worked at.I highly recommend this book to those who aspire to excel in Project Management and distinguish themselves from the rest.

An appalling number of typos and poor grammar seriously detract from the value of this purchase. When you see this kind of publication you HAVE to doubt the quality of effort that went into the substance of the writing. It's just juvenile...I mean, my 15 year old daughter can put together more error-free pages of text than Mr. Dow and his "publishers". But in this era of DIY publishing this is the stuff you end up buying.Mr. Dow's obvious antipathy towards software development teams practicing Agile bleeds through and provide some degree of levity.Then again, laughing at the author of a book you paid $18 for is joke that never survives its initial telling. (BTW, the author's descriptions of Agile methodology belie his utter ignorance of the values and principles they embody.Frankly, the approach that the author takes and the obvious experience he has with the subject matter manages to penetrate the abysmal writing. There is some information that could help someone trying to figure out how to stand up a PMO. But there must be...there HAS to be someone that can write about project management and not mess it up in the presentation.

OMG ! this book is an excellent resource for me. I am currently writing my dissertation on 'Critical Success factors and failures in implementing PMO's". I was able to joint notes and references and I may finally have working title. I love the actual MS schedule for assembling a PMO.Thank you so much for this book!

I tried to read this book and take it seriously, despite the plethora of typos and poor grammar. However, in the end, I had to stop reading.

This is by far the best book on PMOs. It has every thing you need to know.

Poorly written, badly structured and an unacceptable amount of errors in text. Was this self-published? Message loses credibility due to poor structure. Very verbose and poorly structured with lots of repetition and errors.

Very complete and well organized. Although the extention is large you can look at some chapters independently to learn about your topics of interest