Books

Project management books reviewed and the top takeaways shared for you! Learn about the new trends in project management from the best authors.

Is everything a project? Interview with Ben Synder

Is everything a project? Interview with Ben Synder

Today I am interviewing Ben Snyder, author of Everything is a Project: 60 Lessons from Successful Project-Driven Organisations. I spoke to Ben about his book, starting with the idea behind the title. Hello Ben. Let’s get straight into it. Surely not everything is a project? What about routine repetitive tasks like manning a customer service…

3 Steps to Presence: Book Review of The Power of Presence

3 Steps to Presence: Book Review of The Power of Presence

Presence. It’s that thing all successful project and programme managers have. It’s when you walk into a room and the team subtly acknowledges you’ve arrived. You see it when the project team listen to a good project sponsor talking about the project’s objectives, or when a portfolio manager discusses the business benefits that will be…

Book review: Off Balance

Book review: Off Balance

Matthew Kelly found out he had cancer aged 35 and started re-evaluating what was really important. Off Balance is the result. It’s a book about work-life balance, but it’s not the normal time management stuff. Kelly frowns on the modern-day culture of individualism, hedonism and minimalism. He proposes instead that you strive to become the…

Focus on Coaching: Book review of Leading and Coaching Teams to Success

Focus on Coaching: Book review of Leading and Coaching Teams to Success

I particularly liked the sub-title of this book: The Secret Life of Teams. Leading and Coaching Teams to Success by Phil Hayes is about what happens to teams behind closed doors. It talks about how teams gossip, go off the rails and implode. There’s something cathartic about reading about teams in a worse state than…

Book Review: On Top Of Everything: Manage Your Projects and Life with Ease

Book Review: On Top Of Everything: Manage Your Projects and Life with Ease

“Not so many generations ago, life was simpler,” writes Laurence H Seton in On Top Of Everything: Manage Your Projects and Life with Ease. Over the last 30 years Seton says he has used pretty much every productivity system available. He rejected the paper to do list method of staying organised that I use with…

Book review: Project Success: Critical Factors and Behaviours

Book review: Project Success: Critical Factors and Behaviours

What makes a project successful? Emanuel Camilleri in the book Project Success: Critical Factors and Behaviours has tried to answer that question. This book from Gower is the bible on getting it right, covering everything from the history of project management to managing information flow and organisational diagnostics. The problem with a book on project…

Checking for success: an interview with Joanne Flinn

Checking for success: an interview with Joanne Flinn

Summer of Books 2011 continues with an interview with author Joanne Flinn. Joanne Flinn is the author of The Success Healthcheck for IT Projects: An Insider’s Guide to Managing IT investment and Business Change, which I reviewed in February. I had the pleasure of meeting Joanne for coffee earlier this year when she stopped over…

Book review: Projectegrity: Using Integrity to Make Your Project Great

Book review: Projectegrity: Using Integrity to Make Your Project Great

Rick Valerga’s new book, Projectegrity: Using Integrity to Make Your Project Great, continues the concepts he dealt with in The Cure For The Common Project. Projectegrity is integrity in a project environment—what it means, how you get it and what to do with it. It’s not that easy to say, but it’s an easy concept…

Book review: Leadership Principles for Project Success

Book review: Leadership Principles for Project Success

“It’s misleading to define project success in static terms, focusing only on the final delivery,” writes Thomas Juli in his book, Leadership Principles for Project Success. In this book, he sets out a broader definition of success, although you have to wait until page 84 to get to it. Project leadership is a hot topic…