Books

A new book emphasizes the integration of project management and change management to improve the chances of success for business, IT and other organizational initiatives.

Based on the best practices of winners and finalist from PM Solutions’ annual PMO of the Year award, a new book offers tips, insights and checklists for people management, performance measurement, strategic alignment, organization design and more.

The more you specify exactly what your team must do and how it must do it, the less team members will seek to understand the thinking behind what they’re doing. High-performing teams start with a firm grasp of the goals of the project — the "why" — and then actively participate in achieving its success.

Project managers avoid drama and unnecessary stress by understanding the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved, starting with their own. In Part 1 of this series, we outlined the reasons why we run projects and why defined roles are so important. Now let’s dive deeper into the “what and how” of the project manager role.

Much of the unwanted drama we face as project managers comes from people not understanding their roles and responsibilities. When people don’t know what is expected of them, they rarely perform well. It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen. But first, we must understand our role — and why we really want it.

When it comes to leading or working as part of a project team, collaboration (or the lack of it) will often determine the success (or failure) of the endeavor, regardless of planning. A new book gathers 42 rules for collaborating more effectively, covering people, processes and technology.

Putting out fires is an all-too-common job requirement for many project managers. If you are struggling with resolving conflicts on your team, here are some tips for turning those emotionally charged disputes into productive conversations.

When faced with a disaster, project managers must become recovery managers. Here, a turnaround specialist shares seven tips for turning around troubled projects, starting with realizing there is a problem and concluding with ways to prevent future disasters.

While requirements discovery and analysis is a critical best practice for application development, requirements and Agile methods have rarely meshed. In a new book, Dean Leffingwell shows how to leverage the benefits of Agile without sacrificing the value of effective requirements.

Challenges are different than targets. They pull from the future rather than a forecast of the future. There is no question that goals influence behavior; it’s just that they are a blunt instrument. So be careful what you ask for; you will probably get it.