Recommended Project Management books
You don't have enough time to learn everything from personal experience.
Reading good books expands your horizons.
Books allow you to step outside your organization.
Books can bring you up to speed quickly on a subject.
You can extract a lot of good ideas from a book.
Experts clarify their thinking by writing and teaching. You gain from this clarity.
Here's a list of recommended books on:
No one book covers all of project management in an organized fashion.
Browse through these books in a bookstore to find one that suits your style.
email me with your questions
Project Management
| Book Title
| Author
| Date
Publisher
| Contents
|
| Project Management - 6th edition
| Dennis Lock
| 1996 Wiley
| Covers Project Management process from initial appraisal to closedown.
|
| Project Management
| William Pinkerton
| 2003 McGraw Hill
| Achieving Project Bottom-Line Succe$$
|
| Project Management 8th edition
| Howard Kerzner
| 2003
| A systems approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling.
|
| Visualizing Project Management
| Kevin Forsberg
| 2000 Wiley
| A model for business and technical success
|
| PMBOK
| PMI
| 2007 PMI
| Project Management Body of Knowledge.
Outlines some of the key responsibilities of a project manager including:
plan development, scope management, time management, cost management,
quality management, human resource management, communications management, risk management
and procurement management.
|
PMI Exam Preparation books
| Book Title
| Author
| Date
Publisher
| Contents
|
| Project Management Professional Study Guide
| Joseph Phillips
| 2004 McGraw Hill Osborne
| Contains 700 plus practice exam questions.
|
| PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide
| Kim Heldman, PMP
| 2002 Sybex
| Includes CD with practice exams and book in electronic format.
|
| Exam Cram 2
| David Francis
Greg Horine
| 2004 Que
| 320 pages
|
Project managers must build their team to complete the project.
Building high-performance Teams
| Book Title
| Author
| Date & Publisher
| Contents
|
| Virtuoso Teams
| Andy Boynton
Bill Fischer
| 2005
Prentice Hall
| Lessons from team that changed their Worlds
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| Wisdom of Teams
| John Katzenbach
| 1994, Harvard Business School press
| Creating the high-performance organization
|
| The Discipline of teams: A Mindbook
| John Katzenbach
| 2001
| Workbook for Delivering small group performance.
|
| Trust
| Francis Fukuyama
| 1995, Penquin Books
| Includes a comparison of the social dynamics of various
societies in building trust between individuals.
High trust societies include: US, Germany and Japan.
Lower trust societies where family connections play a much larger role
include: China, Italy, France and Korea.
|
| Team Software Process
| Watts Humphrey
| 2000, Addison Wesley
| part of SEI series in Software Engineering. Contents many tips for documenting
|
Project methodologies identify alternatives for tackling projects.
Project managers should familiarize themselves with methodologies relevant to their project type.
A methodology may cover the complete project life cycle or only a portion of the life cycle.
Software Project Management Methodologies
| Book Title
| Author
| Date
Publisher
| Contents
|
| The Enterprise and SCRUM
| Ken Schwaber
| Microsoft Press - Best Practices
| Benefits, enterprise transition projects, prioritized backlog and
shortening release times.
|
| Agile Estimating and Planning
| Mike Cohn
| Prentice Hall
|
|
| Rapid Development
| Steve McConnell
| 1996 Microsoft Press
| Taming Wild Software Schedules.
Reviews about twenty-five best practices in the software industry.
|
| Implementing the IEEE Software Engineering Standards
| Michael Schmidt
| 2003
| Recognized by the Software Engineering Standards Committee of the IEEE computer society
as a useful guide for software practitioners applying software engineering standards.
|
| Software Assessments, Benchmarks and best practices
| Capers Jones
| 2000 Addison Wesley
| Combine assessments and benchmarking for optimal software analysis.
Identify best practices for software development.
Improve software quality.
Reduce costs of software maintenance by avoiding software errors.
|
| Software Project Management - A Unified Framework
| Walker Royce
| 1996 Addison-Wesley
| Covers software development using the Unified Framework for Object based software.
Highly recommended.
|
| The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit
| Ralph Kimball, Laura Reeves, Margy Ross & Warren Thornthwaite
| Wiley
| Expert Methods for Designing, Developing and Deploying Data Warehouses.
Lots of detailed task description even if you never build a data warehouse.
|
Estimating project duration, work effort and cost challenges even experienced project managers.
You need a knowledge of sizing metrics to compare your project with others and
estimating metrics that measure team performance in producing different deliverables.
Estimating Effort and Cost
| Book Title
| Author
| Date
| Contents
|
| Applied Software Measurement, 2nd edition
| Capers Jones
| 1997, McGraw Hill
| Assuring Productivity and Quality.
This book based on the function point method of estimating
contains many useful methods, conclusions and tables.
Every IT manager responsible for projects should read this book.
|
| Software Measurement
| Dick Simmons, Newton Ellis, Hiroko Fujihara, Way Huo
| 1998
| A visualization toolkit for Project control and Process Improvement
|
| Project Estimating and Cost Management
| Parviz Rad
| 2001
|
|
| Function Point Analysis
| David Garmus
David Herron
| 2001
| Measurement Practices for Successful Software Projects.
|
Requirements form the foundation of systems development.
Documented requirements necessary for change control to manage scope creep.
Requirements Definition
| Book Title
| Author
| Date & Publisher
| Contents
|
| A Requirements Pattern
| Patricia Ferdinandi
| 2002, Addison-Wesley
| Requirements Engineering for Internet products
|
| The Unified Process - Elaboration Phase
| Scott Ambler
| 2000, CMP
|
Best practices in implementing the Unified Process. A collection of articles from leading authors.
|
Business Process Improvement should be undertaken prior to major systems development.
Business Process Improvement methodologies
| Book Title
| Author
| Date & Publisher
| Contents
|
| Reengineering Handbook
| Raymond Manganelli & Mark Klein
| 1994, AMACOM
| A step-by-step guide to business transformation.
Very detailed until you get to the point of where the magic new methods are discovered.
A more detailed book for discovering innovative solutions is
Breakthrough thinking
|
| Business Process Improvement
| James Harrington
| MacGraw Hill, 1991
|
The breakthrough strategy for total quality, productivity and competitiveness.
|
| Process Innovation
| Thomas Davenport, Ernst & Young, Center for Information Technology and Strategy
| 1993, Harvard Business School Press
|
Reengineering Work through information technology. |
Project Managers use project software to prepare project plans, estimate project duration,
communicate task assignments to project resources,
track project progress and communicate to clients and management.
Microsoft Project is the leading project management software being adopted by many organizations.
Microsoft Project
| Book Title
| Author
| Date & Publisher
| Contents
|
| Microsoft Project version 2007 Inside/Out
| Teresa Stover
| 2003. Microsoft Press
|
|
| Using Microsoft Project version 2007
| Tim Pyron
| 2002, QUE
|
The most comprehensive book on using Microsoft Project and Project Server.
|
| Microsoft Project 2002 Bible
| Elaine Marmel
| 2002, Wiley Publishing
|
The most comprehensive book on using Microsoft Project and Project Server.
|
Project Managers need to foster innovation and creative solutions to challenges that confront project teams.
The following books provide successful methods and tools.
Creativity, Brainstorming and Innovation
| The Elegant Solution
| Mathew May
| 2007
Free Press
| Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation.
|
| Winning at New Products
| Robert Cooper
| 2001
Basic books
| Accelerating the process from Idea to Launch
|
| Breakthrough Thinking
| Gerald Nadler & Shozo Hibino
| 1994, Prima
| Seven principles of creative problem solving
|
| Six Thinking Hats
| Edward de Bono
| 1990, Penguin Books
| A classic that covers blue hat (facilitator), white hat (facts), green hat (creative),
yellow hat (elaboration), black hat (negative = risks) and red-hat (emotion and
values) thinking.
|
| The Artist's Way at Work
| Mark Bryan & Julia Cameron
| 1998, Morrow
| Twelve weeks to creative freedom.
|
email Brian Mullen with your questions
Last updated: Feb. 25, 2009
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