Project Management in Product Development: Leadership Skills and Management Techniques to Deliver Great Products / George Ellis

Project Management in Product Development: Leadership Skills and Management Techniques to Deliver Great Products is written for new and aspiring project managers in product development. Although texts on project management are common, the material presented here is unique, instead focusing on product development, a challenging segment of project management because of the high level of uncertainty, the need for a robust set of problem-solving techniques, and a demand for broad cross-functional teams.

The book also focuses on more than just project management techniques, including a thorough treatment of transformational and transactional leadership. Other topics covered include problem-solving techniques, development, and continuous improvement of processes required in product development, risk recognition and management, and proper communication with mangers and other stakeholders.

Finally, project management techniques used in product development are presented, including the critical path method, scrum and XP, and Kanban/lean project development, along with the strengths and weaknesses of each.

• Provides ways to successfully manage product development projects by teaching traditional and advanced project management techniques like Gantt, CPM, Agile, Lean, and others
• Covers transformational and transactional leadership, how to create a vision and engage the team, as well as tactics on how to manage a complex set of tasks
• Uses a practical, common sense approach to the day-to-day activities of a project manager, including project planning, project process development, problem-solving, project portfolio management, reporting, and more
• Presents a thorough comparison of popular project management tools
• Includes many examples, cases, and side-bars that are included throughout the book