Reddit mentions: The best techincal project management books

I'm a technical PM for two teams, as a well a contributing dev on both teams.

While the skills are definitely different from programming a few things I've found that helps:

• Get to know AGILE really well. Read the manifesto, read about scrum vs kanban . Understand each's strengths and how to do the process correctly for both. I tend to think SCRUM is like fitness, you have to do it right to get the full benefits. If I go the gym and work out then, eat a gallon of ice cream everday, I won't be fit.
  
  
• Understand how to write good user stories, look into different patterns people use . For example the "As a <user> " format is quite popular but really understand how to flush out stories .
  
  
• Avoid strict timelines (I know you mentioned it in the OP) but a PM can't be 100% rigid on timelines and even suggest them . The way that works for our entire company is we base everyone complexity and use the fibonnaci scale to estimate complexity by having multiple people on a team vote. I (as the PM) look at past velocity (how many points we completed) and then project out how long something will take based on the point values estimated by the team. This works FAR better than "oh it will take 2-3 weeks". People are bad at time estimates, complexity estimates are a much better gauge.
  
  
• Practice your networking skills and diplomacy skills. Part of being a good PM is having established relationships with other teams and getting things for your team. A good product owner is a leader, but not a dictator. You don't tell the team what to do, you set the vision, and remove any blockers in their way. As part of this too is being available to answer questions.
  
  A few books you should read:
  
  
• Notes to a Software Team Leaders Even though its focused on being a lead/supervisor, you can get a lot of good insight on how to help guide the vision of a team.
  
• [Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time] (https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Doing-Twice-Work-Half/dp/038534645X). Really good book on understanding the spirit behind scrum, with real world examples. Not very technical , more about why rather than what scrum is. I've read this several times.
  
• The Phoenix Project. Good book about breaking down barriers between teams and working towards a shared goal. It is devops focused, but I believe product managers would benefit from reading this as it illustrates the importance of shared ownership, automation and avoiding silos.
  
• How to Win Friends and Influence People. Great book on interpersonal relationships and how work with others.
  
• The Clean Coder. A book focused on professionalism for developers (not so much the code, but overall environment/culture). This is a good resource to understand the dev cycle in the real world and what teams should be doing to be professional. This will help you when making decisions on specific things to focus on.
  
  In terms of sprint plannings, just remember it's a negotiation. You're not there to tell people what to do. Rather you have the stuff you would like done, but you negotiate with the team on what's possible and what's not. I've seen too many PM's get pissed cause their teams couldn't do 100% of what they wanted and that's not right. Rather a good PM, imo, brings options and lets the team decide how much they can handle. There have been times when I've gone into sprint plannings and non of items made it on the sprint, and that's ok.
  
  Sorry for the long rant!
  

When I took it, we used the sample "Sakila" database for a lot, it is part of the MySQL tutorials here: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/sakila/en/.

Also a strong book on database design is: Check this out: Database Systems: Design, Implementation, and Management (with Prem... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1111969604/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_DxCOyb8P48Q7D )

It's a text at many colleges - but covers stuff like ERDs in great detail. Handy reference. Don't buy a new one though, $$$. Find a used one or you can rent e-book for like 30 bucks / semester ( may not be most recent version but that's ok)

Many years ago, I wrote the book "Offshoring IT Services: Offshoring Management".

More about my book-writing and publishing experience: "On writing a book". So, how did I benefit?

• The book was published by an a-list publisher (McGrawHill )
  
  
• My (then) employer bought hundreds of copies to distribute to clients
  
  
• The book sold well though the royalty didn't make me "rich"
  
  
• I got a raise and some good consulting gigs
  
  If you have a good idea on startup or entrepreneurship that you want to share, by all means write the book.
  

I've also spent over 20 years on implementations and I completely agree on all points. I'll add one other point: aside from data conversion, the HR system is the "single source of truth" for just about every other internal system and many vendor interfaces. Before you even choose your new HR system, make a critical analysis of your interfaces, inbound and outbound, and find ways to minimize the amount of custom work. I had one customer that was clever enough to create a small database external to the HR system which was the source of most outbound integrations, updated from the HR system every day. When they converted to a new HR system, they only had to create the one new feed; all other interfaces were already in place and thoroughly tested.

And for that current production HR and payroll data you can't avoid converting, I wrote a book: The Data Conversion Cycle: A guide to migrating transactions and other records, for system implementation teams.

Wow. It's like he took the two-stage, semi-modular design from The Rocket Company and scaled it up to go to Mars.

I'm skeptical though. It smells like a lifting-body design, which to me seems like more complexity than I would have expected from SpaceX. And I'm waiting to hear about a space cargo version that Musk can sell to cover NASA's tepid LEO/BEO plans. At $0.5B/flight, I don't think Musk wants to fund this himself.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
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I do know it'll be a CompTIA Project+ Cert. I haven't really looked @ the material yet, I'm buried in Directory Services. I've had positive results from using the Sybex Series in the past and I've already picked up the book for Project+.

Funny, these are my two courses this term - Directory Services & Proj+.

This book was recommended by John_Carmack and other rocket scientists

https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Company-Patrick-Stiennon-ebook/dp/B00BWEEWOI
The Rocket Company is a fictional account of the development of a commercial two stage to orbit (TSTO) reusable launch vehicle (RLV). Included is a description of the business model devised by a group of seven fictional investors committed to creating an economic engine that will cause the cost of space transportation to spiral rapidly downward as the market for launch services expands. In this context, the marketing, regulatory, and technical problems facing any serious attempt to reduce the cost of space transportation are explored. Although a work of fiction, the book follows in the vein of non-fictional accounts of the development of successful technological products and businesses, such as The Soul of a New Machine, and American Steel.

I work at a data analyst, and I use SQL everyday. Here are the two books I have in my office for reference: [book 1] (http://www.amazon.com/Oracle-10g-SQL-Joan-Casteel/dp/141883629X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345343539&sr=8-1&keywords=oracle+sql+10g) and [book 2] (http://www.amazon.com/SQL-All---One-For-Dummies/dp/0470929960/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345343578&sr=8-1&keywords=sql+for+dummies). These plus Google have saved me many times.

Are you aware of the numerous uncanny similarities?

http://amzn.com/B00BWEEWOI

Eschewed carbon fiber for aluminum.

Friction stir welding.

Funded by dot.com billionaire.

TSTO.

Pop-up trajectory 1st stage.

Gas generator cycle.

Favor rugged & simple over complex & bleeding edge.

Sure thing!

http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Project-Study-Authorized-Courseware/dp/0470585927/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463544309&sr=8-1&keywords=project%2B

It's the book that ucertify pulls its material from so you might also be able to get a PDF of the book from a course mentor. I thought there was a link somewhere in the COS but I can't find it.

https://www.amazon.com/Project-Management-Mining-Handbook-Delivering/dp/0873354036/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mining+book+owen&qid=1573088595&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Project-Study-Authorized-Courseware/dp/0470585927/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426225915&sr=8-1&keywords=project%2B

The Rocket Company had an interesting idea to allow orbital launches from inland locations, in there they built the first stage to fly vertical to lob the upper stage out of the atmosphere and then the first stage would shuttlecock its way back to the launchpad area while the upper stage had to do all of the sideways boosting instead of using the first stage to pick up a couple kilometers per second sideways like, say, a Falcon.

It'd require a built-up second stage and have efficiency losses, but the argument was that the real savings would come from having lots more launch locations, much lower recycling costs between launches, and so on. First stage failures have your wreckage confined to your launch complex and upper stage failures can have a huge flexibility in where the spacecraft comes down or, if it's something like the vehicle coming apart, the hypersonic re-entry tears it apart and it's essentially no different from a small aircraft accident by the time stuff hits the ground.

I'm not suggesting that's the plan here, but... just as a thought experiment, if the Starship is borderline SSTO on its own, then one that's lobbed vertically out of the atmosphere should be able to comfortably orbit with payload and then land like normal, just less payload than a standard downrange first stage course would provide. The first stage lands back at the launch complex for the next flight and...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Again, not saying that's the plan here, but what an announcement THAT'D be at the 9/28 event....