Project Mangement for Professional Services
Publisher: Haile Solutions, LLC
Pages: 141
Edition: 1st
Authors Pages:
Cost/Purchase Price:
Get the Book at Amazon for: $9.99
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Overview of "Project Management for Professional Services"
This 141 page book consists of 11 chapters + the intro chapters and the closing of the book.
Each chapter covers a different topic with titles of:
- Chapter 1: Why this book
- Chapter 2: People + Process = Success
- Chapter 3: Project Initiation – starts Before You Think It Does
- Chapter 4: Planning your Perfect Project I
- Chapter 5: Planning Your Perfect Project II
- Chapter 6: Executing to Deliver
- Chapter 7: Monitor & Control Like a Pro
- Chapter 8: Project Closure
- Chapter 9: Understanding Project Financials
- Chapter 10: Agile for Professional Services Projects
- Chapter 11: Leveraging Technology & Artificial Intelligence
- And That’s A Wrap
What I Enjoyed About The Book:
I was actually surprised about this book. It turned out to be a great book that I really enjoyed reading.
It is short at 141 pages and was easy to read – with tons of great information. Even for those who are not focused solely within the Professional Services.
It is written less as a text book and more along the lines of the authors personal experiences. This means you are learning from real-life examples of success and failures. Mikes openness on his failures allows you to easily learn from his examples.
I really enjoyed the short but informative chapter on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Once of his comments in the book made me walk right over to my work computer, do a quick YouTube search and start investigating more. In turn, I was able to take a quick paragraph in this book and use it at my day job, increasing my own productivity.
Any book that I can I can immediately walk away with actionable assistance to a problem I face – automatically gets a big thumbs up and immediate room on my bookshelf.
What I Didn’t Enjoy About The Book:
The book lacked any pictures, graphs, or visuals. I’ve mentioned before that I am a visual learner, having graphs or images that summarize his points would have been helpful.
Event some pictures of him out on some of the project he worked on would have been useful and more engaging with the audience throughout the book.
Other than that, I really enjoyed the book and its quick succinct chapters on his own experiences within project management professional services.
A Few of My Favorite Takeaways:
A line that I saw within this book really made me excited:
"It is better to be proactive and make changes early rather than wait for issues to arise and deal with them reactively."
I liked seeing this statement since my own catch phrase is “Stay Proactive Over Reactive” – showing that if you just put some work in during the early stages of a project, you can easily succeed during later times as well.
During Chapter 8, Mike goes into the do and don’ts around closing a project. Maybe its because I am currently in the process of closing a project, but a few things from this chapter hit the head for me.
What made me laugh was that he talks about starting one project while still closing out the other. I am living through that struggle right now. And it is not enjoyable.
His chapter on Agile and speaking to when to use Agile and when to use Waterfall is a great conversational piece for new project managers. His emphasis on not one methodology filling every scenario is perfect, using his own personal experiences to drive the topics.
Who Should Read This Book?
Let me start off with who shouldn’t read this. Since my target audience is new and aspiring project managers, I want to make this disclaimer. You should not read this book if you are studying for your PMP or other project management certifications.
Mike even mentions on page 9: “This book will not help you pass any project management (PM) exams).
Mike also mentions that this book is for practitioners and for those who want to take their project management career into the world of consulting. Or if you plan to work in business that sells/contracts out projects.
I think this book is a good read for project managers who have been working in the field for some time. Full of tidbits from his career, I really think that if you have a solid foundation in your project management career, you can read this book and easily take away some great information that is easily applicable to your projects.
Even if you do not work within the professional services industry, this book is a great, personal journey through their own lessons learned in professional project management. He talks about his failures and his success – giving a great balance to the book.
And for the price of $9.99, it really is a great book to pick up and take away some great advice for your future projects!
Overall Rating:
The Author
Michael Haile
Link to Author Website:
The Risk Blog
Thank you for checking out this book review for: Project Management for Professional Services
I highly recommend you pick up this book, take notes, and apply some of its contents in your daily life and projects!
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