Categories: book
I'm proud to say that the second edition of Choose Your WoW! is now available. It was released in early February and as you can see my physical copies arrived today, and they look great.
Choose Your WoW! is Concise
The focus of the second edition is to provide an overview of the DA tool kit, rather than the first edition which provides both an overview and detailed reference information. As you know we updated the reference material on a quarterly basis, as per our version control strategy, which meant the reference material contained in the first edition has gotten out of sync with the current material. To address this issue we have removed sections 2-5 from Choose Your WoW, which provided reference information for Inception, Construction, Transition, and Ongoing process goals respectively. This information is now captured on PMI.org, via a combination of the process goal overview pages and in the DA Browser.
In short, pun intended, the second edition is 125 pages where the first edition was 441 pages. As you can see in the picture below, the difference is clear.
Choose Your WoW! is Updated
We have also updated the overview material in the book to bring it into alignment with version 5.3 of the DA tool kit. The key changes that we made to the material are:
- Chapter 1: Added Figure 1.4, a screen shot from the DA Browser; Updated Figure 1.6 (Scope of DA diagram), to reflect the simplification of the Foundation layer.
- Chapter 2: Updated Figure 2.2 to reflect the updated scaling factors (we went from 6 to 7). Changes: We added the Skill Availability factor, renamed Technical Complexity to Solution Complexity, and made the choices on the vertices non-IT specific.
- Chapter 3: Figure 3.3 (process goals overview) updated to list the three new Ongoing process goals: Measure Outcomes, Organize Metrics, and Intake Work; Figure 3.6 (tactical scaling factors) updated to reflect the 7 tactical scaling factors.
- Chapter 4: No changes of note.
- Chapter 5: Figure 5.1 (process goal level of detail) updated to reflect the new scope of this book; Figure 5.2 (process goals overview) this is a repeat of Figure 3.3 above; Figure 5.5 is now a screen shot from the DA Browser rather than a text table; and Figure 5.6 added, a screen shot from the DA Browser showing how references work.
- Chapter 6: Figure 6.11 (MBI/MVP overview) updated to make the descriptions clearer; Figure 6.14 (choosing a lifecycle flowchart) simplified to reflect feedback from practitioners.
- Chapter 7: This is now an updated version Chapter 28 from the first edition.
- References: Reduced the number of references because many of them were specific to Sections 2-5 in the First edition. All of those references removed from the book appear in the DA Browser as references.
- Index: Reduced in size due to the removal of sections 2-5.
Choose Your WoW! is in Color
The first edition was in monochrome the second edition, as you can see in the picture below, is in color. Although my photo isn't the greatest, the color really is sharp.
How to Get Choose Your WoW! Second Edition
There are several ways that you can obtain a copy of the book:
- Free PDF. Like many PMI books, all current PMI members can download a personalized PDF of the book.
- From the PMI book store. At the PMI bookstore we are selling it for $19.95 US for either paper or EPUB format.
- From Amazon. The book will be available at the various Amazons throughout the world in the coming weeks.
All three options are linked to from the Choose Your WoW! book page.
Mark Lines, myself, and everyone at PMI hope that you find the book a valuable asset on your learning journey.
