Book review: Microsoft Project 2013 The Missing manual

Hi Readers,The Missing manual cover

It’s been a while since I posted a book review. The last one was in Januari and was the Book review: Delivering Exceptional Project Results. Today I would like to review the book “Microsoft Project 2013 The missing manual” by Bonnie Biafore. We know Bonnie from a number of posts I did earlier; another book review and her guest post about multiple baselines.

Bonnie is an active trainer/author on a number of fields. She has writen 27 books (according to her own blog). Ranging from Project Management and Quickbooks to a thriller called Fresh Squeezed.

One reason why it took me so long to write another book review is because the sheer size of this pill, 786 pages thick! Let’s take a closer look at the book!

An overview of Microsoft Project 2013 The Missing manual

With 786 pages, 24 chapters, 5 sections and 20 pages with “appendix” this is another giant. The five sections are about:

  1. Project Management
  2. Project Planning
  3. Projects in action
  4. Project power tools
  5. Customizing project

Some specifics

The book is easy to read thanks to the large amount of figures and riddled with “Tip” sections. The pages on Understanding duration, work, and units (pages 251 – 254) are a great read on one of the most important items in MS Project. But rather then only informing us on the work resources, the book also has a good focus on all the other types of resources such as the cost and budget resource options.

The Missing manual is a walk through Microsoft Project 2013, but it also gives insights on best practices on a Project Management level. Sections such as “word to the wise” and “reality check” are focused on items such as “Leaving Buffers Between Tasks”. And questions such as What to do with Project information get addressed in this book.

It even has a six page keyboard shortcuts chapter, awesome!

The verdict on The Missing manual

I used to give my book reviews a number ranging from 1 to 5. However, this number is highly unlikely to be of any interest to you. Therefore I would like to say that any book I review on this blog is good enough for your personal/professional reading pleasure. I will not continue rating the books anymore. That being said: Bonnie this is another gem, thank you for writing it and providing me with a copy!

If you are curious about the book, but not yet convinced to get your own copy, here is an excerpt from the book posted on MPUG. And I got a free sample PDF on The Project Corner OneDrive.

If you want to get your own copy of the book you can find it directly through this link or clicking on the book cover at the top of this post.