Project Management Leadership

When John U. Bacon played for the Ann Arbor Huron High School River Rats, he never scored a goal. Yet somehow, years later he found himself leading his alma mater’s downtrodden program. How bad? The team hadn’t won a game in over a year, making them the nation’s worst squad. With almost everyone expecting more failure, Bacon made it special to play for Huron by making it hard, which inspired the players to excel. Then he defied conventional wisdom again by putting the players in charge of team discipline, goal-setting, and even decision-making—and it worked.

Nada es más inspirador que una ambiciosa visión que se convierte en una realidad triunfante: el Empire State Building pasó de ser un boceto a cambiar el skyline de Nueva York en tan solo veintiún meses. Sin embargo, la mayoría de las veces las grandes visiones se convierten en auténticas pesadillas: según las estadísticas, un asombroso 92 por ciento de los megaproyectos superan el presupuesto o el cronograma, o ambas cosas. Incluso los esfuerzos más modestos, como emprender un pequeño negocio, suelen fracasar.

If you want to achieve success in project management, then pay attention...Some projects were always bound to fail. However, that is just a tiny minority. Most projects fail at least partly because of poor project management. This audiobook aims to demystify project management and show you two different approaches that have a big following: Agile/Scrum, a very free form methodology that is good for services and software, and Lean Six Sigma, which is more data-driven and particularly useful for high-volume businesses from call centers to manufacturing.

It's no secret that the Agile process is fast becoming the preferred way to manage projects, and in the year ahead, Agile is expected to become even more widely used. The goal with this audiobook is to change the way you and your company approach your customer's needs so you can deliver products to them faster and with more value, while also turning the process around internally to create a workplace for which people line up to work.

In the course of my more than 15 years of experience as an attorney, I’ve worked on billions of dollars’ worth of public construction projects, and I’ve seen them succeed and fail. The general lack of prior experience that many public officials have, when properly acknowledged, can be a great asset, rather than a significant detriment. How is that so? When you come into a project without the burden of prior assumptions based on previous project experience, you can reenvision what a successful project should be, and what your goals should be.

Do you wish you knew how to manage your team better, and get them to commit to your bold vision? The truth is...the majority of managers are simply not very good at goal-setting. (Because they were never taught how to do it properly.) Most corporate goals are never completed on time, and even your highly-educated employees are (usually) not working on essential tasks during the workday. This can be damaging to your career, and can destroy your productivity.

Author Matt LeMay explains agile in clear, jargon-free terms and provides concrete and actionable steps to help any team put its values and principles into practice. Examples from a wide variety of organizations, including small nonprofits and global financial enterprises, bring to life the on-the-ground realities of agile across industries and functions.

The ability to relentlessly identify and mitigate risk. That is the key to high-performance project teams. This audiobook focuses on the fundamentals: simple structures and practices, applied with rigor. These are the tools you need to avoid the late changes that kill project schedules. Underlying all of them are four principles: accountability, transparency, integrity, and commitment. Risk up Front is designed to turn these principles into practice.

There’s nothing more frustrating than an unproductive meeting - except when it leads to another unproductive meeting. Yet every day millions of people conduct meetings - in person or online - without the critical understanding or formal training on how to plan and lead them effectively. This book offers a structured method to ensure that meetings will produce clear and actionable results. Meetings that are profitable and productive ultimately lead to fewer meetings. This book offers leaders a significant edge by

Have you ever tried your hand at software development only to find out that it’s much harder than you prepared for? Not only do you have to make sure that your skills are at par with everybody else, but there is also the matter of coordinating with everyone involved in that project. And with collaboration comes the potential for complexity.

If you have ever been part of a great team, you will know it is exponentially better than being part of a mediocre team. Teams are at the heart of working in complex domains and are essential to the success of agile approaches yet relatively few teams achieve greatness. Agile and leadership coach Geoff Watts has pulled together his many years of experience with all sorts of teams from software to product development, from medical teams to sports teams and has identified five common characteristics of great teams:

All projects, large and small, are subject to various risks. But the failure to manage inherent risk with diligence and know-how can lead to devastating consequences for an organization. In this comprehensive hands-on guide, a renowned expert in the field provides everything organizations need to conduct project risk management the right way.

Todos tienen que enfrentarse todos los días a dilemas importantes: ¿Dónde hay que poner las prioridades y por dónde hay que empezar? Ahora ya disponemos de un método seguro para responder: el Sprint. El diseñador Jake Knapp creó este proceso de cinco días en Google, donde los sprints se empleaban para todo tipo de proyectos, desde el Google Search hastaGoogle X. En Google Ventures empezó a trabajar con Braden Kowitz y John Zeratsky y los tres han conducido más de cien sprints con empresas del sector de la telefonía móvil, del comercio electrónico, la sanidad, las finanzas y otros.

This audiobook will give you an overview of Agile methodologies and how you can use them to speedup development and drive customer satisfaction.

Do you feel like you’re being barraged on every side by the needs of your company, your employees, or your customers? Do you feel overwhelmed by the challenges and constant pressures of leading your organization? Do most days at work feel like you’re trying to hang on in the middle of a storm? What if you could feel calm and lead with confidence and control, no matter what is going on around you? In The Eye Of The Storm, TedX speaker and successful business owner Brad Borkhuis will share with you how he turned his company from a $700,000 loss into a thriving and profitable business ...

Fortunately, you do not need any programming skills nor project management certifications to start your dream career now. You will just need the right guidance to learn the fundamentals of agile project management. I’ve provided everything you need to know in this audiobook for you to start now. Are you ready and set to become Agile?

Simply put, no one cares if you study hundreds of books or just spend few weeks prepping for the exam. The only thing that matters is a flash message on your exam computer screen stating: "Congratulations! on passing the PMP exam". This small guide (listening time is less than two hours) will give you everything you need to understand the dynamics of the exam and ace it like a pro.

No organization is totally free from destructive friction; the forces that make it harder, more complicated and sometimes downright impossible to get things done. Drawing on years of research and featuring case studies on the likes of Uber, Netflix and Boeing, The Friction Project teaches listeners how to become 'friction fixers'. Stanford professors Sutton and Rao unpack how we should think and act like trustees of others' time. They provide friction forensics to help listeners identify where to avert and repair bad friction, and where to maintain and inject good friction.

Retrospectives are indispensable for continuous learning and improvement in lean, Agile, DevOps, and other contexts, but most of us have suffered through at least one retrospective that was a waste of time or worse. Now, leading agile coach Aino Vonge Corry identifies 24 reasons that retrospectives fail and shows how to overcome each of them. Using the familiar “patterns” approach, Retrospectives Antipatterns introduces antipatterns related to structure, planning, people, distributed teams, and more.

For project managers looking to establish credibility and drive winning results, author Tom Kendrick’s groundbreaking system provides the key to leading cross-functional, outsourced, and other types of teams through every stage of the project cycle. Results Without Authority is the definitive book on control - teaching the three principal levels of control, including project process, influence, and metrics, among other important areas. You will learn the surefire way to keep projects moving forward.