Books are powerful forces in my life. I'm the son of a University Librarian and have grown up with books, reading books, owning books, using books as the means to an end.
There are nearly an endless list of books on Project Management. I've avoided buying any of them. When I see them on the shelf at the book store, open them randomly to a page and start reading - what I read is mostly bad ideas about managing real projects. Bad ideas, bad writing, and most often really bad advice.
I now have a list of Project Management books that I own and therefore would recommend, in no particular order
- The Management of Projects, Peter W. G. Morris. Thomas Telford, UK (can be found on Amazon)
- Antipatterms in Project Management, William J. Brown (available on the shelf)
- Augustine's Laws, Norman R. Augustine (I got my from book store at work, but you can find this on Alibrus)
- Managing Agile Projects, Kevin Aguanno (on the shelf)
- Modelling Complex Projects, Terry Williams (amazon)
- Project Delivery System, 4th edition, CH2M Hill, ISBN 0-9652616-0-3 (can be found on Amazon, but use the ISBN to find it)
- Defense Acquisition University Program Manager Tool Kit is a framework for project and program management, that is updated pretty regularly.
- The Integrated Project Management Handbook from Dayton Aerospace.
That's it. Every other PM book I've encountered - and there have been 100's - is either too simple minded, based on obvious concepts found in any PMBOK-restatement, or has no practical use for the project manager on the ground.
If you owned the books above, you'd be light years ahead on understanding that project management is not a formula, it is not a body of knowledge to be applied in a step by step manner. It is a human-centric endeavor based on deep and broad experience, that is focused on getting to "done" through the engagement in conversations about "what does done look like."
