Making Things Happen

Scott Berkun spent nine years as a program manager for Internet Explorer and later served as lead program manager for Windows and MSN at Microsoft. Drawing on that experience, he wrote this second edition as a set of essays on the ideas and approaches behind defining, leading, and running projects. Rather than prescribing particular techniques, the book concentrates on underlying principles and strategy, and it is written so that technical and non-technical readers can both follow it through a large software or web development effort.

The essays take a conversational, personal form, closer to a seasoned project manager answering questions from a colleague than to a conventional reference manual. Berkun covers how to get things moving, how to make sound decisions, handling specifications and requirements, what to do with new ideas, avoiding friction with coworkers, building leadership and trust, the realities of hitting deadlines, and how to recover when a project goes off course.

This edition adds a new foreword from the author and a discussion guide for reading groups and teams. It also includes exercises that help readers connect the lessons to their own work. Berkun's background includes teaching project design and management for MSTE, Microsoft's internal best practices group, which informs much of the advice here.