Post-mortem meetings are important, but they will only get you so far. Baseline columnist and senior IT project lead Bruce F. Webster reinforces one of the most overlooked aspects of IT management: Reading books. Webster outlines 5 books that are easy to read but chock full of real, practical project information and strategies for making IT management a better, less risky and more successful, less stress-inducing process.
The 5 Books Every IT Manager Should Read Right Now
(
Page 1 of 4 )
In
my last column, I talked about setting up a reading program for your IT
department. However, whether or not you can get your IT engineers to read, you
yourself need to be aware of the fundamental realities of IT project management
and software engineer that have been discovered again and again. In other
words, you need to lead by example and read this stuff first.
So here are five books that you should buy and read as soon
as possible, if you have not already. And, honestly, if you have already read
these books, you should probably read them again.
These are not the only books you should read -- here’s my
full recommended reading list --
but these have the advantage of all being relatively thin and easy to get
through, as well as all being currently in print.
The
Mythical Man-Month (Anniversary Edition) by
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.. Brooks first published The Mythical Man-Month in 1975. It was
a collection of essays from his experience as project manager for the IBM
OS/360 operating system team, and it became an instant classic, both for its
readability and its fundamental truths.
Every time over the years that I’ve
thought I’ve come up with some new key insight in IT project management, I’ve
usually been able to find some passing reference to it in TMMM. In 1995, Brooks
published an anniversary edition, which contains the text of the original
edition, plus several more essays, including the classic “No Silver Bullet—Essence
and Accident” as well as Brooks’ own analysis of how well his observations have
held up.
IT Management 
