Anecdotes abound of examples of Bad Project Management. Sometimes these anecdotes are used to suggest a corrective or preventive action that might actually work. Other times these suggestions are simply bogus.
If those making unsubstantiated claims were to read the resources below before making any claim, they could avoid the embarrassment of being wrong.
Here are some resources for actual corrective, preventive, and simply good project management principles, processes, and practices.
- Effective Complex Project Management: An Adaptive Agile Framework for Delivering Business Value, Rober K. Wysocki
- Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO: Multiplying ROI at Warp Speed, Gerald Kendall and Steven Rollins
- Reinventing Project Management: The Diamond Approach to Successful Growth and Innovation, Aaron Shenhar and Dov Dvir.
- The Program Managers Guide to Software Acquisition Best Practices, Department of Defense Software Best Practices Initiative
- Software Acquisition Best Practices: Experiences from the Space Systems Domain, R. J. Adams, S. Eslinger, K. L. Owens, and M. A Rich, Systems Engineering Subdivision, The Aerospace Corporation
- The Simplicity Cycle: A Field Guide to Making Things Better without Making Them Worse, Dan Ward
- F.I.R.E.: How Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, and Elegant Methods Ignite Innovation, Dan Ward
- Radical Elements of Radical Success: Valuable Life Lessons That Might Make You Laugh, Might Get You Trouble, and Might Lead to Some of the Most Amazing and Worthwhile Failures You've Ever Experienced, Dan Ward.
- The Executive Guide to Breakthrough Project Management: Capital & Construction Projects On-Time in Less Time, On-Budget at Lower Cost Without Compromise, Ian Heptinstall and Robert Bolton.
- Reuters Project Manager's Handbook for Master Projects
- Project Delivery System Fourth Edition, CH2MHill - this was the handbook we used for the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site closure site
- Visualizing Project Management: Models and Frameworks for Mastering Complex Systems, Kevin Forsberg, Hal Mozz, and Howard Cotterman.
- The Management of Projects, Peter Morris
- Communicating Project Management: The Integrated Vocabulary of Project Management and Systems Engineering, Hal Mooz, Kevin Forsberg, and Howard Cotterman
- Project Management and Methods, Sven Antvik and Hakan Sjoholm - Sven was a Project Management of Swedish defense systems and a speaker at College of Performance Management, where I speak often.
- Project Manager, Elizebeth Harrin - this is a book I'm proud of contributing to
- The Program Management Office: Establishing, Managing and Growing Value of a PMO, Craig Letavec
- Measuring Time: Improving Project Performance Using Earned Value Management, Mario Vanhoucke
- Integrated Project Management and Control: First Comes the Theory, then the Practice, Mario Vanhoucke
- The Handbook of Program Management: How to Facilitate Project Success with Optimal Program Management, James T. Brown - Dr. Brown is a former NASA Program Management and executive leader
- Performance-Based Project Management, Glen B. Alleman - this is my book of how to increase the probability of project success
- AntiPatterns in Project Management, Willaim Brown, Hays W. "Skip" McCormick, and Scot Thomas - it was popular some time ago to write about anti-patterns. This is an example of that process.
- The Story of Managing Projects: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Elias Carayannis, Young Hoon Kwak, and Frank Anbari - I have a chapter in this book titled "Agile Project Management for IT Projects."
- Towards Improved Project Management Practice: Uncovering the Evidence of Effective Practices Through Empirical Research, Terrence John Cooke-Davies - many in the agile community like to use the term empirical data when in fact they have no empirical data showing that their supposed methods actually improve the probability of project success. This book shows actual data
- Maximizing Project Value: A Project Manager's Guide, John Goodpasture - John's publisher is the same as mine
- Agile Project Management for Government: Leadership Skills for Implementation of Large-Scale Public Sector Projects in Months, not Years, Brian Wernham
- Project Management the Agile Way: Making it Work in the Enterprise, John Goodpasture - another book from John on project management, this time for Agile projects
- Modelling Complex Projects, Terry Williams.
- Improving Project Performance: Eight Habits of Successful Project Teams, Jerry Wellman.
