Best business project management books according to redditors
We found 84 Reddit comments discussing the best business project management books. We ranked the 38 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 84 Reddit comments discussing the best business project management books. We ranked the 38 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Articles from reputable sources are a decent source of knowledge, but some quality business books will get you an infinitely better understanding of concepts. Here is my personal business book list if you want to get a "universal generalist" understanding of business:
I am graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce Honors degree in May and I can easily say that one of these books (average price ~25$) has significantly more content than most individual classes I have taken (~600$). However, keep in mind that business knowledge and business acumen are two entirely different things. Knowledge is easily obtainable through books like these, and acumen is the result of applied experience with decision making. In short, it is one thing to be book smart, but it is another to get out there and actually apply it. No one can give you that in the form of an article or book - you have to do that yourself.
edit: added links to amazon
In the book Lean from the Trenches the author made the experience that using T-shirt sizes (S/M/L) was perfectly sufficient and no less accurate overall than using finer point scales. And this was in a huge government project with several teams doing a Scrum of Scrums.
I studied interaction design in Sweden and it is not easy to talk about it in general. I talked students from other universities and every single one had a quite individual approach on it. Mine was rather technical, some are more artsy, some include stuff like service design and so on.
The stuff that is generally true is that it is a lot about understanding your user, collecting requirements, working on ideas in a team, building prototypes as well as testing your prototypes and products with users. This will give you a collection of tools to develop interactive products that will work for users and help them to achieve their goals.
At first it should be noted that this is not so much about art and visual design as you might expect. It is related and it is great if you can acquire skills in this area but it is not a hard requirement. I went in without any art education at all. I am still not great in that area but I learned a lot. Although it was more about what I learned while executing projects than having courses about it. But from what I have seen so far from design studies this one seems very universal: You get what you make of it.
If you want to start a portfolio, it is not about showing some flashy Photoshop mockups but about having a few projects that you can use to show your process. So if you want to prepare really well you could skim a book about user experience like A Project Guide to UX Design and design 2-3 things using the methods in there. So you could e.g. design a simple webshop with checkout or website for your local cinema: write down requirements, user stories, draw wireframes (a few alternatives), make a prototype (paper or click), test it on friends and write about how it performed and what you improved.
Yea, rather complex topic. Not sure if this was what you were looking for. Feel free to ask for more.
Do good work. Impress the right people. Be noisy, but above that know your shit.
Produce work that is:
Read actual software development management books. Managing Humans and The Manager's Path are my top 2. An Elegant Puzzle is a good 50/50 blend of "managing ICs" and "managing managers" with sprinklings of TPM related topics.
Say no more, fam.
You don't need a degree to run a business. Having your own business allows you to experiment with these books first hand instead of taking some professor's word for it. Professor's usually just read what the book says. If they were actually good at running a business they'd probably be doing that.
Hi skunk,
Since everyone is remaining quiet I might as well give this a shot. I'm from a technical background but currently studying PM in my spare time in the hope that I can progress in this direction within my industry.
PMP
It seems like the global standard is the PMP with PMI which requires:
> A secondary degree (high school diploma, associate’s degree, or the global equivalent) with at least five years of project management experience, with 7,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.
> OR
> A four-year degree (bachelor’s degree or the global equivalent) and at least three years of project management experience, with 4,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.
I'm currently studying towards this. I've taken recommendations from this subreddit (and /r/pmp) and bought:
and
In order to obtain the required 35 contact hours, I bought one of several cheap Groupons for $99. I'm not going to link the course because I don't necessarily recommend it - it should be easy enough to find and people have linked to these in previous posts. It doesn't really matter anyway because it's just so I can "tick that box", as I've learnt everything I need to know from the books.
The exam however will have to be sat in person. I have yet to do this so can't give you any pointers.
CAPM
If you don't match the above criteria, you can always opt for the lower qualification of CAPM (also with PMI) and work your way up.
For this I reccommend CAPM/PMP Project Management Certification, Third Edition and the previously mentioned online course.
Please note that you can potentially pitch anything as a project in the right light, even washing the dishes. Aim high and try to get the hours for PMP if possible.
PRINCE2 & SIX SIGMA
What else? Well, if I'm successful with the PMP and still enjoy PM after the blood, sweat and tears, I'm looking at these two qualifications.
I've already added a few books to my Amazon wishlist but have yet to seriously look into these with enough detail to commit.
I know that the exam for the PRINCE2 foundation level (and possibly practitioner level?) can be sat online with a webcam.
Six Sigma I know very little about except that several colleagues have mentioned it and my industry takes it seriously. However, I don't believe you can do these Six Sigma "belts" online.
Sorry for the serious wall of text but I just thought I'd share everything I know about PM accreditation. This isn't a comprehensive list but I'm planning on doing 90% online so I'm in a similar situation to yourself.
I would be grateful for any feedback myself from experienced PMs on my plans going forward.
MORE PRODUCT-ORIENTED BOOKS
"Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love" (Marty Cagan) - 2008
https://www.amazon.com/Inspired-Create-Products-Customers-Love/dp/0981690408
"Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers" (Geoffrey A. Moore) - 1991/1999/2014
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC119W/
Don't Make me Think (Steve Krug)
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability/dp/0321965515
Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age (Roman Pichler) - 2016
https://www.amazon.com/Strategize-Product-Strategy-Roadmap-Practices/dp/0993499201
I would need more information from you before I could make some solid recommendations.
by 'adopt agile methodologies' do you mean your company just said 'we want to be agile now. go make it happen.' or have you already made the commitment to hire an agile coach? how big is your dev organization? are we looking at 2 or 3 teams of ~10 people each? or are we looking more at 15 teams with 10 each?
You personally should also try to understand what Agile is and what it isn't. after that, you should try to understand what scrum is and what it isn't. with this information you'll be able to figure out what you need to brush up on and dig into.
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Some general things to know:
the scrum training/certification shows bare minimum exposure to knowledge to begin practicing. IE: you should never assume that anyone that has gone through training knows how to implement Scrum in an organization. This includes yourself. At best, the cert means you have enough knowledge to talk about Scrum, and could practice scrum in an environment where it is already in place. it is not a good measure of your ability to aid a company in an agile transformation.
Aglie/Scrum is not a magic bullet. it takes a lot of hardwork and effort to make it work. It's better than what you're doing. but one of the key things Agile/Scrum does is bring the problems you have to the surface so you can fix them. IE: if it doesn't hurt, you're probably not doing it right. be prepared. you've been doing a lot of work that enables bad process. you're going to see all of it in painful, excruciating detail. Focus on fixing the process and making it the way it should be, even if that means slowing WAY down on getting product out the door. depending on the size of your organization, it may be a full year before you really start to see major benefit. it might take you 6 months to fix all of your broken processes and break even with where you are now. Keep in mind, that fixing some of the broken might include an increase in scope to some people's jobs. Don't take shortcuts. you're not doing yourselves any favors by trying to cut corners and implement faster. the transformation will put strain on the weakest parts of your process. it's supposed to.
No series of courses is going to prepare you to spearhead a transformation. You will need expert help, it's not something you can easily stumble through. it becomes more difficult the bigger your organization is. and keep in mind, that the transformation isn't segregated to development only. it will have repercussions in marketing, sales, etc. There is a reason a company is expected to hire a dedicated person as a scrum master (as opposed to having a dev manager that acts as scrum master).
read these two books:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262509/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465834584&sr=8-1&keywords=phoenix+project
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-Trenches-Managing-Large-Scale-Projects/dp/1934356859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465834595&sr=8-1&keywords=lean+from+the+trenches
If you're going to be the main driver of transformation, you're better off reading those two books than undergoing scrum training. they will give you a more complete understanding of what you're trying to do.
I'd recommend reading [Project Management Lite by Juana Clark Craig] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Project-Management-Lite-Enough-Nothing-ebook/dp/B00AJ3S76M/ref=sr_1_98?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1405101844&sr=1-98&keywords=project+management). Concise, easy to read and covering all the basics, it'll give you an easy start to managing your first project without unnecessary jargon and acronyms.
One of the people who edited this book had a class with me, and I've heard it recommended by others. Maybe it would fit the bill.
Strategize - I’m reading it at the moment. It’s great - no fluff just straight to the point
My resource has been the book "Essential SCRUM". Here's the book on Amazon.ca, feel free to find it in your region.
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0137043295/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_yqqkDb1RWTQP8
The beauty of it, in a sense, is that although it's pretty expensive, the first 2-3 chapters should give you everything you need to know. The rest of the book will push you further if you want to be a Scrum Master.
Who is it that you are delegating to? What kind of work is it that you do? If you work on large-scale collaborative data projects, J. Scott Long has good suggestions about documentation practices that improve efficiency and make it easier to collaborate with other people. His book is called The Workflow of Data Analysis Using Stata. His principles are useful even if you don’t use Stata.
You can download chapter one from his website.
He periodically offers workshops in the ICPSR summer program .
I have not taken the exam, but I started to learn the topics.
I started reading through the exam-prep book published by Sybex written by Kim Heldman, who is an experienced project manager. That book is about 300 pages long. Sybex also publishes a book with practice test questions which I might use after that.
There's also an exam-prep book by Robin Abernathy, published by Pearson, available.
If you download the official exam objectives from the CompTIA website, you'll see it's not a very big set of topics. It seems like it's mostly about learning the terminology.
On Quizlet, there are sets of flashcards there for Project+ that you can go through to reinforce or test what you've learned from a book.
You can also download the official PMBOK Guide pdf in case you want to read its sections to learn more about a Project+ topic.
My favorite book on Scrum is great.
https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Scrum-Practical-Addison-Wesley-Signature/dp/0137043295
I really like Making Things Happen. Casual tone, emphasis on heuristics, and enjoyable to read.
PMBOK- https://www.amazon.com/Project-Management-Knowledge-PMBOK%C2%AE-Sixth/dp/1628251840
Rita's Book-https://store.rmcproject.com/pmp-exam-prep-ninth-edition
Vargas video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC7pN8Mjot8
Prepcast exam simulator-https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/pmp-exam/the-pmp-exam-simulator
Good luck!
> We have a primary PO, 2 SM, and separate pools of ~15 BAs, ~30 devs, ~15 testers; all grouped into 5 smaller 'agile' teams.
So there are around 12 members per team? That sounds quite large. Succeeding with Agile recommends teams of 5-7 people. I personally like having 1 tester, 1 BA, and then the rest of the team being software engineers provided that the team is responsible for delivering end to end features.
> Our 2 week sprints total 1 month in dev, then 1 month in test (PTA/UAT), then moves to production.
This sounds more like a 2 month sprint. You should be capable of taking user stories and finishing them in their entirety in a single sprint. This includes requirements, design, coding, and testing. Having a 2 week sprint duration is the most common sprint duration and works pretty well for most teams. So if your team can get your process fixed up, you can stick with 2 week sprints.
>However, a team member proposed that for requirements issues or UAT change requests, that we should always defer these for a later release; if it isn't in the acceptance criteria, it gets deferred.
Why should these be deferred to a later release? Are requirements not allowed to change? Remember the Agile Manifesto welcomes changes in requirements. It is not possible to get all of the requirements "right" the first time. Some of the requirements will emerge from what you learn from feedback as you work on the software.
>My hesitation with this is that our next 1-2 releases are planned out, so it may take 1-2+ releases to come back around and fix a small issue that was deferred.
Are you not allowed to change what you are releasing? What if the market changes? What if you demo to the client and they don't like the direction the feature is going in? Essential Scrum argues against a fixed-scope release for this reason. When planning a release, we should be able to make adjustments to our release plan to account for these things. Here is a good excerpt from Planning Extreme Programming that talks about this:
"How stable is the release plan? Not at all. The only thing we know for certain about a plan is that development won't go according to it. So release planning happens all the time. Every time the customer changes his mind about the requirements and his priority, this changes the plan. Every time the developers learn something new about hte speed of doing things, this changes the plan."
I would say the BEST book is this one, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)–Fifth Edition.
The reason why, is the PMP/CAMP/Project+ are all based on this book. So not only will it get you Project+, but it will also prepare you for the other two certs from PMI. It's not short, I mean it's 600 pages, but it really is the best for these certs.
Otherwise, I think the Sybex book is your best bet. It's half the size and will only focus on the topics covered in Project+
If i were you i would look at the PMBOK book first then. A lot of what i have read so far is about organization, documentation, genaric/broad direction that you can tailor to industry specific standards and goals, and assignment and delegation.
I think, since you will be running a team in the future, its really helpful to know how to organize everything and make things much more streamlined. You will be able to set expectations of your editors as a group, and as individuals. It can help define rolls and responsibilities and cut down on a lot of confusion in processes and procedures.
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Check out this book on Amazon to help you get started.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1628251840/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_1miVDbJV2W54M
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Since your company is willing to pay, and if you are planning on staying with the company long enough, Id say go for it!
> You mean evidence for your argument? Yeah, ideally...
Either you have no clue about the basics of project management or you want evidence that is completely impossible to provide and thus making the argument on a random public forum is pointless. If the former, here is my evidence that you can look at to see how you have to manage resources for a project:
https://www.amazon.com/Project-Management-Dummies-Stanley-Portny/dp/1118497236
> No I didn't. I said any budget/time/effort that went into the trailer could have been directed at fixing any of the bugs (not all) during development. This includes playtesting, making reports and trying to eliminate them to the extent that the additional budget/time/effort would allow.
> Less bugs? What else would it have meant?
Let me throw your own ridiculous statement back at you, where is your evidence for this? Actively fixing one issue can lead to creating others. Just pull up the patch notes from any game ever. Any software ever. From any Microsoft Windows version to World of Warcraft, and you'll find plenty of examples of them fixing issues that didn't exist when the software/game was released.
At a certain point you just have to release it no matter how much time you spend trying to fight bugs. You can disagree with the polish on the final product but to prove that more budget/time/effort would have made a difference is impossible for an unreleased product. I could look at a released product and say it's unreasonable to expect more resources would have caused Bethesda to fix dragon corpses from not being sent to garbage collection properly (actual note from the first post-release patch) because it's such a small issue they may have never even seen it without the extra data from thousands upon thousands of players playing the game. On the other hand it would be reasonable to expect Neir Automata to run properly at native 1440p if they spent more resources on it during pre-release. It's also entirely possible that no one thought it was worth investing the resources into it whether they had them or not, so not spending the resources on useless trailers would have gone in other directions. Which may not even be on development work, it could be used for training, a corporate retreat, early release, or any number of things that wouldn't make you happy.
And right now this game doesn't exist so trying to argue that saving money on pre-release CGI trailers to fix issues which they may not know about upon release or may not have deemed worth fixing anyways is ridiculous.
Might I also suggest Making Things Happen
There is very little earth-shattering in the book, but it's a breezy read and great reference. It's true utility is in having all of the 101 stuff in one place.
Can't say I agree with most of the replies here I'm afraid - I found the insights from books such as Who Moved My Cheese, How to win friends..., Sun Tzu, Jim Collins to be highly limited.
If you need to pick up business basics there simply isn't a better book than The Personal MBA - read it cover to cover and as you come across concepts that are interesting/relevant to what you're doing, research them further. Personal MBA won't give you the depth but gives you great breadth.
You asked specifically about Project Management - I found that an appreciation of the PRINCE2 methodology really helps when planning and managing projects. http://www.prince2.com/what-is-prince2
The official textbooks on Prince2 are overpriced and not as good as others available such as:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prince2-Study-Guide-David-Hinde/dp/1119970784/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407186842&sr=8-1&keywords=prince2+study+guide
You asked specifically about marketing - but not sure exactly what marketing you're looking at. Personal MBA will give you a great grounding - I particularly like the concept of Permission Marketing explored by Seth Godin. Research how analytics is used in marketing to gain insights about and target customers (the whole growth hacking movement borrows a lot from this) and research the psychology behind marketing (I really liked Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman although it isn't specifically about this). This will give you a great grounding in the 'hard' and 'soft' sides of marketing.
Apologies for rambling response - how it was helpful!
The Standard for Program Management – Fourth Edition (2017)
Governance of Portfolios, Programs, and Projects: A Practice Guide (2016)
Benefits Realization Management (2019)
Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization (2016)
Stata is awesome, but /r/statistics is probably your friend. I'd search first, they've probably had the question before. Personally, I learned SAS & Stata in school, R through online tutorials, and I used books for all of them ("R in a Nutshell", Stata Workflow, and "Little SAS Book").
If you know the statistics underlying the methods, Stata is quite easy. A lot is point and click, and learn how to write a do file. If you just need some practice doing stuff, the Stata help is quite good and has some built in data sets and examples. Stata also has a great resources guide and the UCLA page (top link on resources) is a terrific reference to look stuff up.
Just a little nod of support from the UK, it's a tough nut to crack everywhere. I've gone from nothing to running an agency (with a good technical guy) which employs 7 people. It took over 10 years though.
Firstly, the advice of contacting agencies direct is good. Recruitment firms charge large sums which put off small agencies, the last guy I employed contacted me with his portfolio, it was good enough that in the end I employed him even though we weren't looking.
Secondly, even if you don't learn to 'code' as such, you've got to understand the principles to be able to design with it in mind.
Thirdly, look into UX Design, if you can explain the thought process behind interactive design, you'll impress the boss and clients, cut down on amends / time and get a better result. This was a great entry point for me (there may be better ones out there now) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Project-Guide-Design-Experience-Designers/dp/0321607376 I'm old enough that there were no courses when I started, this may all be standard practice and I may be teaching you how to suck eggs, but that was great for me.
Also, this is good, the reports are brilliant but expensive, the blog and newsletter are free though http://econsultancy.com/
Finally, look to account management with 'skills on the side' it's pretty much what I do now and is far more rewarding than I ever thought. It does depend on you as a person though and age breeds confidence.
Personally I'd say stick with it, but more than that... Enjoy sticking with it, there's a possibility you may not make a shit ton of money in the creative sector (putting it mildly) you have to love doing it or it's not worth it.
And work your tits off.
Best of luck
Recently read Project Management Lite. It was solid through-out, and kept the focus on what was important. You can get bogged down in project management by a lot of unnecessary work. And PMs have an unhealthy need to create processes and lists where none is needed. Project Management Lite helps with perspective, and focuses on what's important.
The largest an agile team should be is usually around 9 people. Daily standup should be time boxed to 15 minutes and if an extra discussion is needed about a particular feature, blocker etc, those who are involved should stay for a discussion afterwards or schedule a separate meeting for it. Everyone answers 3 questions : What did you do yesterday? What are you working on today? Do you have any impediments or blockers?
Stick to answering these three questions and avoid having the daily standup become an unfocused and dragged out meeting.
My workplace had our whole engineering and product team read this book and it was helpful to grasp agile methodologies for both engineers and product managers.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0137043295/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I apologize in advance for the long post: Thanks so much for all the help and feedback everyone! I will definitely try to utilize everyone's advice as best I can. Here is my game plan for the next few months. I would love more feedback if everyone is willing to help refine my process.
1- After talking to my aunt/mentor in the field, she recommends that I should not go for the CSM *until* I have a working understanding of the field I will be getting into. She recommends that I apply/learn as much as I can about Project Management Essentials like the one she took in UChicago. Unfortunately, the next class that is offered is Jan 16th, and I personally want to leave the hell that is my job as soon as possible.
To get over this, I have decided to learn as much as I can on my own from books like A, B, C, D, E (please take a look at recommend if there are others I should look into or if I should drop any). She recommends that I do not focus on just Agile but also Waterfall (a basic understanding). I will also be utilizing the podcasts and links graciously provided by u/recycledcoder:
"So... podcasts. There are many, but these are my faves:
And finally, my own preferred twist on it all: Modern Agile"
2- Once I have done as much research on the fundamentals as I can before October 13 (not a lot of time, I know), I will be attempting the CSM boot-camp course. I want to do this because I have no prior experience in field, and while I know a certification may not mean much, I hope it reflects my desire to start applying for roles for project coordinator positions. I will have to tweak my resume to show my desire, and I think the certification is the first step to do this. I'm favoring the CSM over the PSM and PSPO per u/nizzerp and my aunt's advice as these courses need more experience to apply for.
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I know there are a lot of links and stuff, but I would really appreciate it if I could get as much feedback as I can to start committing to this plan, especially feedback on books and resources in my step 1.
how does the book exactly helpful?
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Things-Happen-Mastering-Management/dp/0596517718
This, $5.99 on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RLTF27H
it's a $99 preorder on US Amazon today. My have been a one-off deal or a mispricing.
I am looking for Healthcare Project Management by Schwalbe 2nd Edition.https://www.amazon.com/Healthcare-Project-Management-Second-Schwalbe/dp/1976573270/
Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management by Scott Berkun is great.
I read an earlier edition when it had a better title "The Art of Project Management"
> Also, my hope is that the two days of SM training (and hopefully certification) would get into it deeply enough that this 'new' approach would be super clear to me. Wondering more how likely it'd be that potential employees would see that too.
The thing about agile is that it's easy to implement, but hard to master. I'm not certified, but I've been a scrum master for the last 5 months. I really suggest The Scrum Field Guide. It has helped me through some stormy waters. (https://www.amazon.ca/Scrum-Field-Guide-Advice-Beyond/dp/0133853624/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1488072918&sr=8-2&keywords=scrum+field+guide)
Does your development team already use agile/scrum? If not, it could be hard to get them to change.
Are you talking about The Scrum Field Guide by Mitch Lacey? Amazon
Great, thanks. I do a fair amount of project work already but between our limited capacity, my split responsibilities, and my lack of PM skills I feel like my wheels are always spinning and I'm not doing a great job.
I'm a big believer in offloading as much information as possible to systems designed to manage it, versus using our consistently poor memories and limited brain space, and I have no idea how to do that with projects. I'm hoping PM concepts and systems cater to this.
edit: are these the books you mentioned?
CompTIA Project+ Study Guide: Exam PK0-004 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119280524/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_kdOxDbM2ZGBH1
CompTIA Project+ Practice Tests: Exam PK0-004 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119363357/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ceOxDbYYB9S8H
Let me recommend Essential Scrum as IMO one of the best books on the topic.
Also just research Lean, Agile and Scrum yourself.
There are tons of free stuff you can read! My handbook is also out there for free.