I am currently reading Ashley Friedlein’s book, Web Project Management .  While not exactly up to the project management standards of the PMBOK, the book presents a complete web project management method. I will post a review once I finish reading and have had sometime to test the method. Meanwhile, the book offers little tips in addition to the method itself. One early tip: Do It Yourself accelerated learning. The author advocates that a web project manager try to create an entire site alone. This includes generating the idea, strategy, “costing”, design, programming, … The idea is to put yourself in the shoes of other members of your team to learn what challenges they face. The goal is to improve your client and team communication skills and learn empathy for your teammates.

I really like this idea, but I feel like the author missed a benefit: undertaking the entire process of creating a site will give you a better understanding of the big picture of production and project management. This exercise allows you to see parts of the process that you may not even know exist. Discovering holes at one point in the process will teach you what you should have done earlier and should implement in your daily work.

I have attempted similar exercises in the past, but mostly to learn new production skills. I would really like to try this someday on a new project to focus on the project management method.