Essential People Skills for Project Managers Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This book provided a great overview of how to effectively work with project team members through the stress and challenges that projects pose. I read it initially in 2005 and recently just reread it again. It helped me look at the PM role from many different perspectives, including that of mentor.

People issues are the challeges that keep most of us awake at night. How do we motivate the team? How do we manage the conflicts? How do we tone down the stress levels? This book gives practical advice that can be immediately applied.

My favorite part was the chapter on dealing with critical incidents - when tramatic events strike the project team. I keep this advice on standby knowing it will save my project some day. My least favorite part was a subchapter regarding individual personality styles. But even that is applicable.

So I very highly recommend reading this book!

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Product Description:
A Treasury of How-to Guidance for Project Success!People problems can really hurt your project, causing delays, eroding quality, increasing costs, and resulting in high levels of stress for everyone on the team. Yet if you re like most project managers, you ve never been taught the soft skills necessary for managing tough people issues. Essential People Skills for Project Managers brings the key concepts of people skills into sharp focus, offering specific, practical skills that you can grasp quickly, apply immediately, and use to resolve these often difficult people issues. Derived from the widely popular original book, People Skills for Project Managers, this new version provides condensed content and a practical focus.Apply project leadership techniques with confidence Resolve conflicts and motivate team members Help a team recover after a critical incident Determine your team memberspersonal styles so you can work more effectively with them

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Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects (Pragmatic Programmers) Review

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(More customer reviews)Part of my work involves coaching organisations in implementing and improving their portfolio management processes. I religiously buy and read most of what is published on the subject in English or French. More than often, I had to conclude that this book or article I just read, I could have written myself... and done then only a half-job doing so. Most of the literature on the subject, I have seen up to now, talked a lot about mathematical scoring models, tools and techniques, addressing mostly the mechanics of the process. It never addressed the soul of the process, the Humans, and how to deal with the main challenge of portfolio management in this area, namely: "How do we get a whole organisation to live a common vision and be truly aligned and willing to make it happen through project work". Most of the books, that have been published, focus on best practices and techniques and do not discuss behavioural aspects as a key issue.....up to now!

"Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects" is Johanna Rothman's third book. Her first two, "Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management" and "Manage It: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management" are real gems and won prices for their quality and usefulness. I do not hesitate to say that "Manage It" is one of the best books around for giving practical advice to project managers. Her last book, as her two others, is full of real life examples and little case studies that supports the principles, concepts and techniques offered. "Manage Your Project Portfolio" is really a very complete "How-to" book on how to set up and manage your project portfolio. This book addresses human aspects very well, including a very nice chapter dedicated to collaboration work in a portfolio management context (chapter 6). The chapter on metrics and measurement is also straight to the point (Chapter 10). Ms Rothman's top-notch practical advices and examples are found all over the place up to the last page, with a great last chapter titled "Start Somewhere...But Start", one of the best things to do when it is time to go forward with taking charge of your portfolio of projects.

I do believe this book gives a more complete view of what is at stake when dealing with project portfolio management and will really help organisations to move forward faster with implementing and improving this key business issue of the 21st century, the Project Age. A very inspiring book!

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Product Description:

All of your projects and programs make up your portfolio.But how much time you actually spend on your projects, and how much time do you spend responding to emergencies?

This book will introduce you to different ways of ordering all of the projects you are working on now, and help you figure out how to staff those projects--even when you've run out of project teams to do the work.

Once you learn to manage your portfolio better, you'll avoid emergency "firedrills." The trick is adopting lean and agile approaches to projects, whether they are software projects, projects that include hardware, or projects that depend on chunks of functionality from other suppliers.

You may be accustomed to spending time in meetings where you still don't have the data you need to evaluate your projects. Here, with a few measures, you'll be able to quickly evaluate each project and come to a decision quickly.

You'll learn how to define your team's, group's, or department's mission with none of the buzzwords that normally accompany a mission statement. Armed with the work and the mission, you can make those decisions that define the true leaders in the organization.

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SharePoint for Project Management: How to Create a Project Management Information System (PMIS) with SharePoint Review

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(More customer reviews)When I saw the title of the book, and the fact that it was from O'Reilly, I picked it up the day it came out.I had high hopes that I would learn some excellent tips on managing projects in SharePoint.To be fair to the author, the book does exactly what the title says... it shows you how to create a Project Management Information Systems site with SharePoint.Maybe my expectations were too high as to what I would learn.

Unfortunately, I don't think I learned anything new from the entire book.The book basically walks you through creating a project management site on sharepoint, tracking risks, assigning tasks, adding a calendar, etc.You could save the effort and just download the free Project Tracking Workspace template directly from Microsoft: [...]
If you are not experienced with SharePoint, then this is probably just fine for teaching you how to create a site, add web parts, and integrate with Office.If you already know what web parts are and how to synchronize with Outlook, then this is not the book for you.

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Product Description:

"If you are a project manager looking for a technology-based, easily implemented, and usable solution for project communications, document management, and general project organization, this book is for you!" -Susan Weese, PgMP, President and Founder, Rhyming Planet

Most companies don't understand SharePoint's power, and use it simply to share documents or spreadsheets. This hands-on book demonstrates how SharePoint can also help you organize and manage complex projects. With SharePoint for Project Management, you'll not only understand how to apply common and practical project management concepts in SharePoint, you'll learn how to build a Project Management Information System (PMIS), customized to your project, that can efficiently coordinate communication and collaboration among team members. With this book, you will:

Learn to apply key project management techniques by leveraging SharePoint as a PMIS
Track a case study that illustrates the circumstances and processes of an effective SharePoint PMIS
Appropriately define access permissions for project stakeholders and team members
Centralize project documents and keep track of document history with version control
Automate project reporting mechanisms and generate on-demand status reports
Track project schedules, control changes, and manage project risks
Integrate project management tools such as Excel, Microsoft Project, PowerPoint, and Outlook

Each chapter includes activities that let you practice what you learn. Most SharePoint books are either too introductory (for end users), or too technical (for system administrators). SharePoint for Project Management is just what project managers like you need to learn how to harness the organizational abilities of this powerful software.

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Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Some months ago I completed a Project Management course for which the textbook was the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) by the Project Management Institute (PMI). As I went through the 9 PM knowledge areas, 5 process groups, 44 processes and the countless tools and techniques in each process, I could not help thinking that something was missing. While the PMBOK does a good job covering project management methodologies, it barely talks about the people skills that Project Managers need for success. Anthony Mersino's "Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers" does an excellent job bridging this gap in the discipline of Project Management.
This book is broken into four parts. It starts with an introduction to Emotional Intelligence, a term that Mersino defines as "knowing and managing our own emotions and those of others for improved performance". The remaining parts deal with Self-management, Building project stakeholder relationships and Using Emotional Quotient (EQ) to lead project teams. To me, the highlight of the book was Mersino's Emotional Intelligence Framework for Project Management This builds upon and customizes (for project management) Daniel Goleman's Framework of Emotional Competencies.
The Emotional Intelligence Framework for Project Management has five domains:
1. Self-awareness
2. Self-management
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management
5. Team leadership
Mersino has over 20 years of project management experience and teaches courses at Northwestern University. Overall, this book is well researched and well presented. In addition, it is an excellent compilation of resources on emotional intelligence for project management. It is a great addition to every Project Manager's book-shelf.

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Product Description:
In order to run projects successfully, project managers need to master more than the requisite technical knowledge. The more complex the project, the more significant their interpersonal skills become to achieving a successful outcome. Without the people skills necessary to lead effectively, even the most carefully orchestrated project can quickly fall apart.
Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers introduces readers to the basic concepts of emotional intelligence and shows how to apply them to their project goals. Readers will learn how to:
* set the tone and direction for the project
* communicate more effectively
* improve listening skills
* create a positive work environment
* motivate, coach, and mentor team members
* productively handle stress, criticism, and blame
* and more.
Complete with hands-on exercises, checklists and self-assessments, this handy guide enables project managers to apply these important skills to their projects right away.

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