Help for Project Managers
340911
This book presents a common sense approach to how women can lead effectively and with confidence. It is helping me improve in my role as a computer software project manager. The chapter on "Influencing With (and Without) Authority" has been particularly useful in identifying people's behaviors and how to adjust my style to influence them. The sections on setting expectations, giving feedback, and coaching fill in some of the gaps not covered by project management methodologies. The examples and first-person experiences in the book illustrate the concepts and make them easier to apply in real-life situations. I wish this book had been available at the beginning of my career!
297396
The book takes the theories of management gurus and makes it applicable to a project manager's life. I liked the story format where the characters figure out how to enable joy in work from many different angles.  The "nuts and bolts" how to guide in the back was helpful.

Project managers have a tough balancing act because they have authority over the project but their teammates can leave without much consequence.  This book speaks to that situation, where a leader has to influence people to engage in the work.
2292826
This book is about applying TOC to project management. After reading this book I understood why TOC for project management is not as straight forward as it might first appear. Not only are projects not repeatable like production assembly lines buts in a multi-project environment you need to take shared resources into account. This is even more difficult when the managers for each project are different people. Lessons learned:

- Estimates should be "In X days with 50% chance of completion"
- Cut estimates in 2 or 3 if suspect that tasks have padding
- All the padding should go for the project but less than sum of padding
- Add time buffers (at no cost) when paths merge with critical path
- If a resource is shared between projects then it may be a bottleneck
- Resource bottlenecks should be treated as such: identify, exploit, subordinate, elevate...
- No due dates so as not to encourage the "student syndrome"

Of all the business novels by Eli Goldratt, I think that this is the one that I have learned the most from. As with all his novels, it's easy and fun to read with the added benefit that you will have learnt to better manage your projects. A must.
1653384
eXtreme Project Management has been extremely helpful to me as a functional (rather than titled) project manager. Though the book as a whole provides a wealth of material that is worth reading straight through, desperate PMs like myself can get immediate coaching on coping with fast-paced, no-failure-allowed projects in several small doses throughout. Chapter 2, The eXtreme Model for Success, coaches the reader through the necessary change in mindset for PMs heading up projects that demand measurable success on short deadlines, and managing the inevitable crazy requirements changes. Chapter 8's Flexible Project Model is an invaluable resource for making sure all the bases are covered, and would make an excellent candidate for a blow-up wall poster. Case studies throughout illustrate Doug's principles of project management in action.

In extreme project management, "Failure is not an option. Speed, innovation, and profitability count. Bureaucracy is to be avoided. Quality of life is important." eXtreme Project Management addresses all of those needs, always focused on the ultimate goal of getting it all done and making the customer happy.

This isn't your father's project management. Then again, these aren't your father's projects.
294738
Many of the most meaningful, visible projects in the world involve Business Process Improvement (BPI).  These are the efforts that change the way businesses operate and aspire to create serious competitive advantage. The lucky project managers that run these take a huge risk - this type of project can make or break their career. Often, they go in without a playbook.

In this book, Gina and Yusuf offer a clear approach to managing BPI projects, with a focus on the soft skills that most PMs have difficulty developing. They walk you through, stage by stage, how to consistently engage with stakeholders in a way that not only makes them feel good about the effort, but turns each relationship into a success tool for the project. The author's guidance isn't just a "now do this", "then do that". They actually help the reader anticipate common challenges before they happen and head them off before they occur.

Finally they offer you a number of questionnaires, tools and templates that will help you along the way. This book will help you do big, important things. If you are facing a BPI challenge its a great investment in your future.
1834557
Great book for those learning about product and project management to deliver software solutions to end users.
2921926
Managing a single project is easy.
Managing multiple projects is hard.

Yet this is the state most companies find them in. They've had success with agile at the individual project level, and now they are looking guidance on how to manage and track multiple agile projects in one complete portfolio.

Fortunately for us, Johanna Rothman gives us some valuable advice on exactly how to do that in Manage Your Project Portfolio - Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects.

Chalked full of great war stories and advice, Manage Your Project Portfolio shows you how to:

  * Create a portfolio for your projects.
  * How to rank, prioritize, and evaluate which ones you should be doing.
  * How to socialize and collaborate on what you are delivering.
  * As well has how to iterate and make decisions at the portfolio level (instead of always down at the project level).

I really like some of the sidebars and stories Johanna has collected. Johanna reminds us that:

Two part time people do not make one full-time equivalent.
Sometimes killing a project is the best thing you can do.
And my personal favorite - fund projects incrementally instead of all at once.

If you are looking for advice around what to measure when tracking your projects, how to come up with an actionable mission statement, or just how to effectively communicate the state of your portfolio ask Santa for a copy of Manage Your Project Portfolio. It could be exactly what your company is looking for going into the New Year.
4454747
Thanks for using basic project management terms when writing this book. I am a beginner and found this book to be an easy read and easy to follow. Love the chapter end outlines.
757056
This book is well written and focuses on what to know to pass the PMP Exam. The exercises are helpful and working through them gives a good foundation for project management as per PMI. I haven't taken the exam yet but find that this book was a worthwhile buy.
175196
This book is coming at the perfect time for me. As a architectural project manager, I have recently completed a new hospital project after 8 years and am about to start on a new Hospital project that the client wants to complete in only 5 years. I have a lot of accumulated knowledge but because my projects are so long lasting, the beginning and proper organization of projects are not as structured as I would like. Reading the first chapters of this book has already given me a different context on how to approach my project. I look forward to completing the book and providing needed structure to my project from the beginning.  A valuable addition to my project management library.
4080841
Disclosure: I am the lead editor for this book as well as a contributor.
I re-read the Roundtable on Project Management just the other day. There was a project problem at my J - O - B, and something was nagging me . . . there's a solution to this, I know there is. Didn't somebody explain this to me once . . . Oh yeah, it's in the project book!
We wanted to create something to have on your desk to get a pointer or a nudge toward solving the problem of the moment. Having lived with the material for almost two years (not counting the forum time) it worked that way for me. Plus I got sucked right in and read the thing cover to cover, extracting three other little nuggets along the way. Pretty cool. Seems to work.
This book works as a wide-ranging, informal discussion of projects; pith-ful and pretty entertaining. It's not a project management manual - there are lots of those. But as a source of jiggles and complementary views it works. These days I give people aspiring to understand projects three books: Dwayne Phillips' _The Software Project Manager's Handbook . . ._ (which wasn't out when we had these discussions), _Software Engineering Project Management_ part of the outstanding series of tutorials from the IEEE, most edited by Richard Thayer, and _Roundtable on Project Management_. Between them, they form a balanced view, and an entry point into more developed information on any of the several approaches to projects.
Editing this book I learned that each project is a story that people live. And every project is made of the woven stories that individuals live. So the book models projects as well as describing them: it's a story made of woven voices. This book feels the way projects really feel. That's valuable, I think.
Editing _Roundtable_ finally started coming together when I re-read _Spoon River Anthology_ - also a bunch of independent stories, each part of a bigger tapestry. I'm no poet, and certainly not the master that Masters was. I did manage to recognize the model I was trying to emulate - I stole from the best. Successful projects are also made of woven voices, that form a whole. So the book models what project success looks like, too, I think.
If you're looking for "Tools and Techniques for Risk Management" or "MS-Project on steriods", or even "Collected Wisdom - A Project Manager's Guide" well, this is the wrong book. If you are looking for a source of nuggets for that nagging problem, and for a compelling story, one like the story you're living, well, this is very probably a good book for you.
And if I contributed to the quality of this book, it's mostly just what good project managers do: let the stories happen. I'll be a good project manager one more time and say that the four stars I gave this book belong to the voices in it - to the contributors. The one star missing is mine. I could only manage to get out of the way four stars worth.
4583701
I picked up this book out of curiosity about a year ago.  My first thought was "this is probably just another PM book that I'll end up putting on a shelf."  I was wrong about that!  The concepts in this book helped me recover a major project that went off track.  There was not a lot of time to perform and we made an assessment of the current state of the project at that time.  Instead of jumping in with a MS Project plan, we re-visited the project scope, assembled a project recovery team and got to work.  We used a simple excel schedule so that all project stakeholders could be informed of our progress. We made some quick wins and started regular communications with the client.  While the recovery of the project was not perfect, we were able to turn the project around in 2.5 months.  The concepts in this book are essential not only to the recovery process but to any part of the project management process.  Nearly all of the concepts can be applied to any project.  I would highly recommend that Rescue the Problem Project be a part of any PM's library!
1063503
This book is suit for new project manager which have not much time to spend with all detail. Highly recommended!!
4862231
Perhaps the thing I like best about this book is the front cover illustration. It shows a bunch of spinning plates on the top of slender rods. I can't think of anything better to illustrate the problems of project management. There soon become so many plates, so many parts of a big project that you are constantly running from plate to plate, from emergency to emergency.

Of course what the book is about is the body of knowledge that has been built up to enable big projects to be managed. The current concepts began with the military organizing itself to handle huge development projects during World War II including code breaking and the Atomic bomb project.

This was branched out to other weapons projects and subsequently to managing projects of all types. As the types of projects for which project management techniques have proved useful, so has the body of knowdedge, techniques and procedures for project management.

In this, the fifth edition of this classic text virtually every aspect of project management is covered, updated to the latest practices, and covering the use of project management techniques in many different contexts. This is not a 'cram' book to enable the student to pass the certification test, instead this is a book that covers every aspect of project management and fits it in with overall management of the company.

Probably the best overall book on project management you will find.
1284103
This book is not an all encompassing project management bible and works well to supplement the PMBOK execution phases onward.  If you hate gantts, and multipage status reports, as most PM's do, then this is for you.  I'd also recommend Visual Explanations by Edward Tufte to close the loop on visual noise.
1962341
This is a great book that explains the basics, and some not so basics, of earned value in project management. Along the way, it also explains the basics of project management.
3914822
It is obvious that the writers have been there and experienced what it is like to manage projects that are more than just difficult. We mostly know how to manage straightforward projects. We can also manage certain types of large complicated projects but it has been increasingly clear over recent years that projects are becoming more "complex" and it is the complex projects that we aren't very good at managing - in fact, we aren't very good at understanding how they behave at all. This book really helps!