When assessment candidates visit my office to discuss their assessment plan or to deliver their evidence, I generally talk to them about their continued professional development. Of course I will tell them to complete the PM qualification and I’ll probably mention obtaining PM certification through the AIPM, but I’ll also recommend a few excellent books that I have read.

Remember that our futures are completely determined by the people we meet and the things we read. Any comments?

So here’s my booklist. I’ll edit this post as I add new books.

Hays Martin, Joe, 2004, Building high-performance teams: a practitioner’s approach, Argos Press, Canberra, Australia
This is an excellent book written by a former lecturer of mine at ANU, J. Martin Hays. He taught about transforming teams to a point to which they are delivering their full potential, and a notion called glorious leadership. One of the artifacts he used in his class was Glorious Leadership! A Holistic Approach to Achieving Leadereship Mastery and Worklife Balance, by Steve Morris. Check it out if you are looking at ways to develop your own leadership skills and knowledge, and that of your team. UPDATE: I have now found the link to the book and added it to the title of the book above.)

Berkun, Scott, 2008, Making Things Happen, O’Reilly, California
This is an update to his original The Art of Project Management. I haven’t finished it yet, but so far I categorise it as a must read for those seeking insight in to the softer skills required in project management.

Johnson, Spencer, M.D., 1998, Who Moved My Cheese, Random House, UK
This is another must read for project teams tasked with delivering change in a change resistant environment. It’s one of those quick reads, in the vain of the Two Minute Manager series, that provides a metaphor which allows the reader to understand how to deal with change, both in their own project teams and within the customer’s teams.

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