Great information about all aspects of project management
Identifies and describes aspects of project management that are generally accepted across all industries.  As the official publication of the PMI on this subject, it is an excellent reference guide for anyone interested in the profession of project management.

It will not give you a cookie cutter step by step approach to project management, so you need to interpret it and take what actions you deem are appropriate for your situation.   It can form the basis for project management practices in an organization.

An outstanding "how to" book with practical guidance
I have recommended this book to many new project managers.  Considering both the human and technical sides of project management, the book provides a great step by step approach to the subject. (Skip chapter 6 "Schedule Computations", since scheduling tools like Microsoft Project hide the need for you to understand these details).

The follow-up to "The Benefits of Project Management", this contains cost information on the "virtuous cycle of project management".
William Ibbs continues his research into project management, partially funded by the Project Management Institute.  Buy this in preference to The Benefits of Project Management if you only get one of these.  This short book documents the latest findings, this time concluding that project management does indeed have value. The three key quantitative findings are:

1. Companies with more mature project management practices have better project performance.

2. Project management maturity is strongly correlated with more predictable project management schedule and cost performance.

3. Good project management companies have lower direct costs that poor project management companies.

These findings, and the manner in which they are presented, should help people make powerful arguments for improvements in project management practices in their company.  There is guidance on the steps you will go through from poor PM activities to good PM activities - the "virtuous cycle of project management".

Find out what companies are actually doing with project management
An excellent study of the subject of project management and how it is understood and applied in a number of companies.  Also contains project management maturity and project management excellence questionnaires. .

There are little gems throughout the book, such as "One or two years is a reasonable time frame for aggressive companies to reach the growth phase" (of the project management life cycle, prior phases being embryonic, executive management acceptance, and line management acceptance).

The book does admit many similarities between running projects with dispersed team members and those where team members are co-located, and determines that it is important to define project management for all projects, then focus on the differences that come from dispersed teams. This means it can take a while to sift through it to find out points that relate specifically to virtual teams. Although it takes time to find, the book does document a good set of things to be careful about when running projects with virtual teams.  Additionally, there are questionnaires to help determine the effectiveness of your virtual teams, and an organizational maturity model for virtual teams to help you understand what you might be capable of striving for.

All told, this book does provide helpful information in a reasonably informative manner, although I would have liked to see some kind of "quick summary of issues to watch out for and plan for" for experienced project managers.  It is a useful addition to the project management knowledge base and covers an area I have not seen well represented before.

Some of the helpful comments from the book relate to the following:

Communications - well, we all say this is more difficult, but what specifically? The book identifies the following:

• confirming understanding of messages

• more difficult to judge personality

• a feeling of lack of recognition of effort / work results from remote team member

Some areas of projects that become more complex are:

• requirements analysis

• integration management

• configuration management

Some new / modified approaches are needed:

• more leadership skills are needed, at each remote location

• meetings need to be even more focused when they are held via phone / video

• email guidelines should be given

• use of some kind of web based team room in place of a physical project war room

Also noted was that people are more likely to be focused on their individual tasks than the overall project (a potential negative), and that you may get less groupthink and more novel ideas (a potential positive).

I've known Paul Coombs for over 20 years, having worked with him at Logica in the 1980's.  He was always one of the most practical software developers / designers I had the pleasure to work with - avoiding unnecessary complications and looking for appropriate ways to tackle problems.  His approach to estimating followed this trend, as he always looked for ways to turn estimating from a black art into a more precise process.

Paul has more experience than most of developing systems, and like many of us has experienced first hand the problems caused by poor estimation.  In this book he provides an easy to follow series of steps towards getting realistic estimates, and why they are important.  There is discussion of various estimating techniques, and their pros and cons.  Along with the book comes a CD with a cost model spreadsheet to help you develop project budgets that take into consideration contingency.  (This model is somewhat similar to that available from the tools area of our website, although it makes for explicit allowance of contingency at the task level).

If you are new to software estimating and find even this straightforward book daunting (it may appear that there is much work to do, but in fact if you want an accurate estimate there is much work to do) then at least read and take into consideration his 12 "Blindingly Obvious Rules of Estimation", the first of which is "Your estimate will be wrong".  If you find it strange that a book explaining how to estimate says up front that in spite of your best efforts your estimate will be wrong, then but the book to find out why, and what this means.

There are some British phrases in the book which may confuse US readers, primarily the use of the phrase "bespoke software" in place of "custom software", and where he talks about the task list I'd like to see him refer to it as the Work Breakdown Structure, but these are minor inconveniences in what is an excellent treatise on the tricky subject of estimating software development projects.

Learn about the psychology of buyers, and an effective sales process
I love this book!  So why do project managers need to know about selling?  Selling is needed in many different situations, not just when a "sales" person is trying to get you to buy something.  Maybe as a project manager you are involved in helping the organization decide whether a project should be done or not.  This can involve persuading people to agree to go ahead with the project - you may need to get them to see the benefits.  If so, this book may help you.  If you are a project manager working for a vendor, then you may be directly involved in a sales process, helping your company win the business.  Even if you have not been directly involved, you are representing your company and are often the front person for winning additional follow-on business. In this case, the book may be much more directly relevant to you.

Michael Bosworth has developed a model for selling which he explains in this book.  It focuses on how to sell intangibles - solutions, rather than how to sell a widget type product.  His writing style is excellent, and the book is packed full of real life examples.  These examples make for wonderful reading - he says how he has seen sales staff squirm when facing tough buyers, and indicates how he helped them in the situation.  These examples make for great bedtime reading!

When I worked for a solution oriented vendor, Logica, we implemented the Solution Selling process in our company.  This was done via a multi-day training class, with supporting tools.  I have continued to use (and therefore remember!) some of the basic principles of this sales approach.  There are a few other formal sales process, but this one seems naturally easy to understand, powerful in its implementation, and was very well aligned with what we were selling.  As a delivery oriented person, I found it exciting to see that selling could be broken down into an understandable process.  I could almost treat a sale as a project!

A paper that my colleague Frank Winters and I wrote about coordinating sales and project management utilizes and references Solution Selling.  The business capture toolset available on our website also provides templates aligned with some aspects of Solution Selling - note that this is NOT a full set of Solution Selling templates.

I highly recommend this book to a wide variety of people, not just sales staff.  As a project manager and line manager I have found it very helpful, and I have seen business analysts at internal IT departments requesting Solution Selling training because they knew that their interactions with their internal business clients would benefit from this.

In doing research for the book, the author interviewed many older people.  When asked the question "If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?", a consistent answer was:

- Be more reflective.
- Be more courageous.
- Be clear earlier about purpose.

I have captured some of my own struggles in articles on my personal website, www.westfordconsulting.com.