Project management books that are truly worth reading by every project manager are included in this review. These books is a great starting point for a new project manager, source of inspiration as well as tips and tricks for experienced PM, great help for project manager who’d like to refresh some topics and get some new ideas and best practices or to pass PMP exam. Some of these project management books can also help your stakeholders understand better basics of project management. If you have a favorite book on project management not included in this review please add it in the comments.

Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Project Management (2nd Edition)

Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Project Management is great well-written and well-paced project management book which can be used in different ways: a fine introduction for educating new project managers, a refresher for experienced project managers, a recommendation reading for clients to help them understand project management. Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Project Management is jam-packed with theories and a wealth of practical experiences and lessons learned.

Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Project Management will show you exactly where to start–and walk you step by step through your entire project! Expert project manager Gregory Horine shows you exactly what works and what doesn’t, drawing on the field’s proven best practices. Understand your role as a project manager, gain the skills and discover the personal qualities of great project managers, learn how to organize, estimate, and schedule projects effectively, manage deliverables, issues, changes, risks, quality, vendors, communications, and expectations.

PMP Exam Prep: Rita’s Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam (6th edition)

This is the 6th edition of the PMP Exam Prep (based on the 4th edition of PMBoK Guide), which has become the standard training material to help project managers pass the PMP exam. This edition contains hundreds of updates and improvements – including new exercises and sample questions. Reviewing topics not covered in the PMBOK, helping you identify potential problem areas in your knowledge, offering hundreds of sample questions that appear on the exam; critical time-saving tips for sitting through a four hour exam plus games and activities available nowhere else, this book will help you pass the PMP exam on your FIRST try.

PMP Exam Prep goes beyond the material contained in the PMBOK incorporating input about project management from around the world. The emphasis on this publication is the tools you need to pass the exam and apply project management principles to real-world situations. If you are prepping for the PMP exam, this book is a must. This self-contained course explains the PMI certification process, offers exam-taking tips and focuses your attention on key project management concepts.

The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management (3rd edition)

This is one of the bestselling books ever published on the topic of project management. It presents you with a wealth of proven techniques for managing projects from establishing project objectives to building schedules to projecting costs. The book includes all the basics on defining, planning, and tracking a project, as well as building stronger project teams. This new edition includes new chapters on Agile Project Management, PMI exam prep, and more.

For someone new to Project Management it has a logical, step by step flow backed up with relevant visuals and great case studies ranging from the development of the Boeing 767-400 to how Seattle’s Safeco Field keeps their grass green. For the more seasoned PM it is a treasure trove of problem-solving techniques, examples and formulas. Like the rest of the Fast Forward series, this book is designed to let the reader extract maximum information in minimum time. There is a strong use of graphics with tables, charts cross-heads, and bullet points. Important passages are flagged in bold and/or emblazoned with the words key concept.

Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management

This book is a reality-based guide for modern projects. You’ll learn how to recognize your project’s potholes and ruts, and determine the best way to fix problems – without causing more problems. Manage It! will show you how to beg, borrow, and steal from the best methodologies to fit your particular project. It will help you find what works best for you and not for some mythological project that doesn’t even exist.

Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management book author Johanna Rothman is a project management consultant. She has seen many different companies trying many different project management lifecycles. Instead of outlining one way to do things, Rothman describes a continuum of project lifecycles from waterfall (what she calls “serial”) to agile. She talks about when each is appropriate, things to watch out for in different contexts, and when the odds are against success in each kind of lifecycle. Other topics that are explored in the book include schedule games and how to avoid them, how to manage meetings, how to integrate testing into your project.

The One-Page Project Manager: Communicate and Manage Any Project With a Single Sheet of Paper

This book should be required reading for every manager who wants to improve project performance, accurately tell their story, and do it efficiently. The One-Page Project Manager shows you how to boil down any project into a simple, one-page document that can be used to communicate all essential details to upper management, other departments, suppliers, and audiences. This practical guide will save time and efforts, helping you identify the vital parts of a project and communicate those parts and duties to other team members. It’s adaptable to virtually any process in your organization, including ISO and SAP.

The book is an easy read, does not try to re-teach project management but explains the use of the form. The book simplicity makes it easy for non-professional and beginning project manager’s .For those with experience this is certainly a method to adopt for rapid, vivid, and persistent communication. If you’ve ever needed to manage several projects at once, you know the dilemma: there has to be a better way to track the projects quickly, concisely and reliably, but finding and learning that better way always seems too tedious, costly, or complicated. This book solves that problem.

Project Management Case Studies (3rd edition)

Compiled by Harold Kerzner, the leading authority on project management, Project Management Case Studies presents the most comprehensive collection of project management case studies available today. Featuring more than 100 case studies, this essential book illustrates both successful implementation of project management by actual companies as well as the pitfalls to avoid in a variety of real-world situations.

Most of the case studies were drawn from the author’s consulting practice and generally focus on at least one or two specific points. Other than on-the-job training, the author states that case studies and situations are the best method to learn project management. The book based on the PMPBok processes gives real life examples of issues which a project manager is more likely to come across. It covers a wide span of applications including medical and pharmaceutical, aerospace, manufacturing, automotive, finance and banking, and telecommunications.

Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme (5th edition)

The fifth edition of this popular project management book gives a comprehensive overview of all of the best-of-breed project management approaches and tools today, including Traditional (Linear and Incremental), Agile (Iterative and Adaptive), and Extreme. Step-by-step instruction and practical case studies show you how to use these tools effectively to achieve better outcomes of projects at hand. Plus, the book provides full coverage on managing continuous process improvement, procurement management, managing distressed projects, and managing multiple team projects.

The author has provided an exemplary text that provides an incredibly thorough illustration of the elements, processes, and learning objects comprising project management. The book takes a complicated subject and breaks in down into so much detail that anyone can absorb the concepts. The material on adaptive project management offers a way out for those projects where the method of implementation is so unknown that traditional full-court project management practices will only hurt and not help. Much of the information on adaptive and extreme project management is similar to the “extreme programming” methodology, but specifically targeted towards a project manager.

Scrappy Project Management: The 12 Predictable and Avoidable Pitfalls Every Project Faces

Scrappy Project Management book is about what REALLY happens in the project environment, how to survive it, and how to make sure that your team avoids the predictable and avoidable pitfalls that every project faces. This book is the resource for the power starved PMs who need to learn how to street fight for resources, deal with customer insanity, and dodge the falling rocks as you stay on top of everything. A fighting spirit and a confident strategy is the return on this investment. This is a book for professionals who want to achieve greatness and demonstrate fearless leadership: for their companies, for their customers, for their teams, and for themselves.

What’s great about this book is the style in which it’s delivered. The real world stories, anecdotes, famous quotes and the author’s unique sense of humor to illustrate the points and make them more memorable. The book also provides a set of checklists, sample diagrams and templates to be used in managing the project and communicating with the team and executives. This book covers the major points to help achieve success. If you’re a team lead, project or functional manager, this book will arm you with valuable insights and motivate you to avoid common and deadly project pitfalls.

Results Without Authority: Controlling a Project When the Team Doesn’t Report to You – A Project Manager’s Guide

“Results without Authority” is a powerful source of tools and common sense advice for people managing projects without formal authority. The book stands out by methodically and thoroughly exploring the issue of control throughout the project life cycle. This practical project management reference brings together a lot of ideas and concepts worth considering for readers who are confronted with projects over which they have little to no formal authority. Throughout the book, author keeps your attention with clear, concise writing and the occasional unexpected laugh.

This book is full of sound, practical, project management advice for carrying out IT and similar type projects. It is also laced with the practical wisdom that only comes from years of experience. Kendrick weaves theory and practice to build a comprehensive set of tools, templates, and checklists that can be used by everyone from the newly appointed project manager to the steely veteran. “Results Without Authority” must be required reading for all project managers, whether they have authority or not.

Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management

Based on his nine years of experience as a program manager for Microsoft’s biggest projects, Scott Berkun explains to technical and non-technical readers alike what it takes to lead critical projects from start to finish with a particular focus on web and software projects. The book includes critical and common challenges of leading projects and managing teams, diagrams, photography, and war stories of success and failure. This book offers practical tools and methods to make sure your projects succeed.

Making Things Happen doesn’t cite specific methods, but focuses on philosophy and strategy. Unlike other project management books, Berkun offers personal essays in a comfortable style and easy tone that emulate the relationship of a wise project manager who gives good, entertaining and passionate advice to those who ask. Making Things Happen offers in-depth exercises to help you apply lessons from the book to your job. It is inspiring, funny, honest, and compelling, and definitely the one book that you and your team need to have within arm’s reach throughout the life of your project.