Must read books for project managers

Must read books for project managers

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1. The Effective Executive

Penned down by Peter F. Drucker, one of the most influential management thinkers of current times, the book is a must read for anyone looking to up the ante in project management.

Highlight: Five essentials to business effectiveness laid out in an easily actionable language.

2. The Lazy Project Manager

Seems quite an unusual name for a topic like project management, but the book is definitely a big thumbs up when it comes to its content.

Highlight: The tried and tested 80/20 rule to explain how you can achieve more in less time.

3. The Mythical Man Month

An all time classic, the book was written originally by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. in the year 1975. It is basically a software management book, but the lessons make it must for anyone related to project management.

Highlight: The exemplification of project management scenarios such as relating them to common things like comparing coding with menu of restaurant.

4. Making Things Happen

Written by Scott Berkun, a Microsoft project veteran, the book has been critically acclaimed for its field-tested philosophies and strategies

Highlight: Emphasis on theory and philosophy as compared to specifics of project management.

5. Death March

Written by Edward Nash Yourdon, a pioneer in the software engineering methodology, the book’s title has been used in the context to the biggest problems that IT projects appear to face.

Highlight: Skillful negotiations and improved project management tips of a kind.

6. Decisive

With this book the Heath brothers bring back the old school philosophy of a project manager’s ability to make decisions as the most important aspect of the job.

Highlight: The four step process designed to counteract the biases in the decision making.

7. Peopleware

The core philosophy of this book can be summed in this quote taken from it ‘The major problem of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature’.

Highlight: Parkinson’s law. according to which the work expands to fill the time allocated for it.

8. Jack Welch and the G.E Way

Robert Slater has brought forward the insights of innovative leadership strategies employed by Jack Welch, G.E’s chief executive for past 17 years.

Highlight: While writing this book, author had unprecedented access to Welch and other prominent GE insiders

9. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge

Whether you are looking for standard project management terminologies or A to Z knowledge areas of this field, this book is must for you.

Highlight: Highly researched theory content.

10. Gazzaa’s Guide to Practical Project Management

The book breaks down the complicated task of project management into practical and simple concepts to understand them better.

Highlight: Addressing the four stages i.e. Initiation/Planning, Execution, Closeout and Project Control.

The book sheds the light on the root cause of trouble that lead to the failure of projects and brings an in-depth analysis on each aspect of handling a project.

Highlight: Real world examples of what works, what doesn’t and why?

11. Rescue the Problem Project

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