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Spider Project now has its first Book

3 replies [Last post]
Marcus Possi
User offline. Last seen 1 week 2 days ago. Offline
Joined: 27 Feb 2010
Posts: 76
Spider Book

During the last year, or since April 2009, we started an analysis of Spider Project application versus the commercial old and traditional ones we use here in Brazil for Project Management support. The results came into a real rediscovering of “tools features x limitations”. No more traditional schedules where only the lack of time was considered to plan our jobs. The resources constraints, that are really our daily problem is available, and in a high level way. We are specialist in MSProject, and very conscious of its limitations and errors.

Published here in Portuguese by Ciencia Moderna Publisher (e-book) 1st edition, its second edition was finished in June and its translation into English occurred simultaneously, as planned by PMI a volunteers work in Rio de Janeiro chapter. Its price was lowered to levels that justify the team effort and PMI’s desires: to make it available and useful to Project Manager Professional and their teams.
In July the 9th we officially presented them here in Rio de Janeiro.
The volunteers’ efforts were well succeeded to make the first 8 chapters
The Portuguese edition covers also the 9 to 12 chapters showing the project controlling and monitoring processes.
You can find then in Spider Book as an e-book (adobe format).

This specific Spider Book Forum would be an excellent way to improve the contents or details it will have in future editions, and also discuss about it.

At least I must warn you, that this work is a mix of styles and individual ways of explaining technical features besides project management concepts, with different language competences and skills. You will feel, as far as you progress through the chapters, the effort volunteers made to present you what was written in Portuguese, on their mission of making project management indispensible for better project results, under their own words.

Some information about the project (translating into English):
1 – We started a 30 days, 410 pages book translation with seven different volunteers, coordinated by another one who checked the execution every three days;
2 – Two other volunteers replaced part of the original team and hold the previous work in a minored time;
3 – We used the Distance Learning System to keep the team in contact and synchronized;
4 – A week before the target date we discovered that the introduction was not produced in English as planned, and an extra effort was necessary to complete the work in date;
5 – The work consisted not only to translate the text but also to keep the page numbers and pictures place in every page;
6 – We had a delay of 5 days in the project schedule, and a buffer of 10 days (the team did not know that;
7 – According with the final meeting (July the 9th), everybody got a great experience with the “endeavor”


Author: Marcus Possi
PMIRIO Volunteers Coordinators Mendel Luiz Pencak,ITIL
PMIRIO Volunteers Translators: Mendel Luiz Pencak,ITIL; Sergio
Balbino França Ribeiro, PMP; Marcelo Magnus Antunes de Oliveira, PMP, ITIL; Ivan Dutra,PMP; Julio Véras Neto, MBA; Luiz Angelo R. Merino, PMP ; Jorge Luciano Gil Kolotelo, MSc, IPMA-C.

Replies

Carlos Arana
User offline. Last seen 6 years 23 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 6 Jun 2009
Posts: 178
Hi Marcus, I bought the e-book.

I must say that the diagrams made in Bizagi are not translated to english and have a very low resolution; and that the english used in chapter 5 is pretty hard to read.

Fortunately, I speak spanish that is very similar to portuguese, but there are concepts like "Providenciar acertos do habilidades" (Appendix M1-13) that are not easy to understand.

I say it as a constructive criticism, in the hope that you can correct this for the second edition of the book.

Best Regards,
Carlos
Stephen Devaux
User offline. Last seen 14 weeks 2 hours ago. Offline
Joined: 23 Mar 2005
Posts: 668
Hi, Augustin. How are you? Hi, Marcus! Your book looks wonderful! So it mentions Spider Project’s incorporation of the DRAG calculation? That’s great! How can I get hold of a copy? (And have you read my Total Project Control book? There are a number of other metrics and techniques that, with DRAG calculation in place, Spider Project would be perfectly suited to incorporate!)

Too bad I didn’t know about this three weeks ago. I gave a half-day seminar at Bentley University for a visiting group of project management students from University of Sao Paulo. They seemed very interested to learn about the TPC approach, and, of course, I mentioned that Spider Project is one of the few software packages that supports DRAG calculation. Several of the students (one was from a food company called Harald, Ltda. Have you heard of it?) said afterwards that they wanted to contact me. I haven’t heard anything yet, but if I do, I promise to mention your book to them.

Good luck! It sounds like you’re doing great stuff.

(And sorry about the World Cup -- I was rooting for Brazil.)

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan
Augustin Purnus
User offline. Last seen 9 years 12 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 22 Mar 2005
Posts: 20
Hi Marcus,

Congratulations to you and your team. It’s a great step in presenting Spider Project features and most of all, the way the reality can be seen, modeled and controlled. And congratulations to Vladimir who is the master mind behind the solution.

Look forward to comment the book.

Best regards,

Augustin