$95

This book supplies IT/Business professionals with proven project-management processes, broadly-tested techniques, and solid approaches to the successful management of projects in varying sizes and degrees of complexity. Individual steps demonstrate how a project manager effectively and efficiently navigates through the what, when, and how of work necessary to take a project from idea to execution; and shows the important role disciplined project management plays in transforming corporate strategy into reality. Chapter topics include fundamentals, the idea stage; planning; developing detailed estimates; scheduling, controlling, and tracking the project; the implementation stage; the operation stage; project portfolio management; procurement planning ; and financial analysis. For IT and business professionals in industries such as banking, publications, manufacturing, finance, insurance, health
care, education, apparel, communications, and a number
of leading public organizations.

I read lots of IT management books and try to narrow down the best ones to recommend to Computerworld’s readers. Project Management for Information, Technology, Business and Certification, by Gopal K. Kapur (Prentice Hall; 528 pages). This is one of the most comprehensive books on project management. Not that this should come as a surprise, given Kapur’s pedigree as the founder of the Center for Project Management and his decades of hands-on experience in working with everyone in the enterprise, from the CEO to end users. I found myself dog-earing page after page with insights I wanted to revisit. (“During the last two decades, there have been numerous instances where management decided to train people in the use of project management software, without first training them in project management principles and practices.”) Kapur, who’s a Computerworld columnist, lists some of the primary reasons for project failures, including unclear business objectives, complexity and risks discovered too late in the project life cycle. He then offers advice on how to achieve success. Readers will likely be intrigued by “the mocking post” concept found on page 49 of the book.

Book Review by Thomas Hoffman