Project Management For Dummies or Howard Hughes

Project Management For Dummies

Author: Stanley E Portny

More than two thirds of American companies use teams to execute their most important projects, making project management a highly valuable skill for advancing your career. Project Management For Dummies, Second Edition introduces you to the principles of successful project management and shows you how to motivate any team to gain maximum productivity.  You’ll find out how to:

• Define your project and what you intend to accomplish

• Identify project stakeholders and their expectations

• Develop a project plan

• Establish project schedules and timetables

• Determine which skill sets and resources the project requires

• Choose team members and define their roles

• Launch you project and track its progress

• Encourage peak performance

• Conclude your project successfully

Complete with helpful tips on delegating, shortening schedules, and optimizing your own performance Project Management for Dummies, help you get your project, and your career, off the ground in no time.

Table of Contents:

Introduction 1
Part I: Defining Your Project and Developing 7
Your Game Plan What Is Project Management? (And Do I Get Paid Extra to Do It?) 9
Defining What You're Trying to Accomplish and Why 29
Getting from Here to There 49
You Want This Done When? 71
Estimating Resource Requirements 105
Part II: Organizing the Troops 135
The Who and the How of Project Management 137
Involving the Right People in Your Project 149
Defining Team Member's Roles and Responsibilities 165
Part III: Steering the Ship 185
Starting Off on the Right Foot 187
Tracking Progress and Maintaining Control 203
Keeping Everyone Informed 229
Encouraging Peak Performance 239
Bringing Your Project to a Close 249
Part IV: Getting Better and Better 255
Dealing with Risk and Uncertainty 257
Using the Experience You've Gained 273
With All the Great New Technology, What's Left for You to Do? 279
Part V: The Part of Tens 293
Ten Questions to Help You Plan Your Project 295
Ten Ways to Hold People Accountable 299
Ten Steps to Getting Your Project Back on Track 303
Ten Tips for Being a Better Project Manager 307
Appendix A: Glossary 311
Appendix B: Earned Value Analysis 319

New interesting book: Active Older Adults Ideas for Action or Fed up and Hungry

Howard Hughes: Aviator

Author: George J Marrett

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Seducing the Boys Club or Real Simple Solutions

Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics from a Woman at the Top

Author: Nina DiSesa

Fact #1: Forty years after the feminist revolution, fewer than 2 percent of Fortune 1000 CEOs are women.
Fact #2: The playing field is not level.
Fact #3: You need to get over this.

From the woman who became chairman of the flagship office of the largest advertising agency network in the world comes a wry reality check on how to get ahead and thrive in the testosterone-driven business arena.

Nina DiSesa is a master communicator, a ceiling crasher, and one of the most successful women in the corporate world. She is also a big-time realist who has figured out that S&M-seduction and manipulation-is the secret to winning over (and surpassing) the big guys. In Seducing the Boys Club, DiSesa shows that you can, in fact, leave your male colleagues in the dust-but not by following the rules you learned in business school.
By playing the roles of den mother, fraternity brother, little sister, and hard-nosed boss, DiSesa navigated the choppy, macho-minded waters of the workplace. All the "bad boys" in her life-and there are many-have provided a wealth of devilishly amusing stories and cautionary tales that DiSesa is only too happy to pass on. Ah, revenge can be sweet, but the truth is that she came to love those boys as much as they love her-which is the whole point.

DiSesa asserts that women need to meld their feminine characteristics (nurturing, compassion, listening) with the traits of their male counterparts (competitiveness, decisiveness, combativeness) to expand their professional horizons. In Seducing the Boys Club, DiSesa shares her practical, outrageous, and even controversial maxims for making it, including:

• Learn to appreciate men. Menlike women who like them.
• Remember that women are biologically wired to succeed.
• If you want to make a name for yourself, find a mess and fix it. A secure and comfortable job only holds you back.
• Don't assume that men never listen. They listen like a dog does.
• Don't be a quiet achiever.
• Act brave and you will look brave.
• Screw the rules. Make up your own.

Whether dead-on funny or deadly serious, DiSesa is always on her game, always on message, and absolutely on target as she arms women with the can-do confidence and no-compromises attitude they need to climb as high as their ambition can carry them-while keeping their standards impeccable and their integrity intact. Not for women only, this book should be read by men, too . . . though it won't give them any defense against a woman who can truly seduce a boys club!

Publishers Weekly

Chairman of McCann Erickson New York, part of one of the largest advertising networks in the world, DiSesa delivers a one-on-one mentoring session on working with, competing against and managing both men and women. Confirming that her nature is to nurture, she is thoughtful and confessional as DiSesa looks back at how she learned to defy her own bad habits-including in-office meltdowns-and to substitute charm in their stead. DiSesa also readily shares insights gained from such nongender-based blunders as letting clients take a break in the middle of a presentation (the clients failed to return to the conference room). Though she refers to manipulating and seducing and learning to exhibit "male" behavior throughout, DiSesa's hard work, talent and insight into human nature appear to be the real drivers behind her success. That DiSesa has managed to package her experiences into accessible form creates a welcome opportunity for both women and men hoping to duplicate her success. (Feb.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Book about: Chestnut Cookbook or Food and Beverage Mycology

Real Simple Solutions: Tricks, Wisdom, and Easy Ideas to Simplify Everyday

Author: Real Simpl

Looking for a new way to set a table? Need to remove an ink stain? Fresh out of toothpaste? From imaginative ideas to innovative tricks to in-a-pinch fixes, Real Simple Solutions is packed with hundreds of easy and inspired ways to help you live better. Following the success of The Organized Home, their top-to-bottom guide to streamlining your surroundings, the editors of Real Simple have compiled hundreds of creative and practical everyday solutions for every part of your life - encompassing cooking, cleaning, decorating, entertaining, dressing, grooming, working, and more. With no-nonsense content and large, lush photos, this stunning hardcover book does double duty as an indispensable household resource and stylish addition to the coffee table.

Real Simple Solutions resolves life's little complexities - and allays the stress that accompanies them. The book is chockablock with ideas that are smart, surprising and easy to do, and perhaps best of all, cost little or no money. Whether they're step-by-step directions for hand-washing delicates, a soup-to-nuts list of pantry essentials, or new uses for newspaper, readers are guaranteed rock-solid, timeless information and advice.

Inspired by the magazine's perennially popular "Simple Solutions" section, the book logically organizes ideas by activity, and presents each chapter in a consistent, clear, and artful fashion. Page after page, Real Simple Solutions features:

• Quick, low-cost ways to elevate the ordinary or unexpected, from dinnertime meals to bedroom decor
• New uses for everyday items, such as emery boards, baking soda, and old beach towels
• Simple instructions for doing common but often difficult tasks, like painting a room or carving a turkey
• Mini organizing projects readers can do in minutes, for everything from desk drawers to dishwashers

In addition, the book includes a compendium of multitasking household products and their myriad uses, and concludes with an extensive, easy-to-use index. Plus, it includes a special eight-page "Crib Sheets" booklet containing tear-out sheets that summarize each chapter. An encyclopedic, graphic take on the traditional household hint book, Real Simple Solutions helps you do the things you have to do - so you have more time to do the things you want to do.

Good Guys and Bad Guys or Winners Never Cheat

Good Guys and Bad Guys: Behind the Scenes with the Saints and Scoundrels of American Business (and Everything in Between)

Author: Joe Nocera

A fascinating collection of profiles by one of America's leading business journalists

For three decades, in major publications such as Texas Monthly, Esquire, Fortune, and now The New York Times, Joe Nocera has reported on the people who dominate the business world, for better or worse. Everyone from Warren Buffett to T. Boone Pickens to George Steinbrenner to Ken Lay has fallen under his microscope.

Now, in this collection of his best work, he explores how we define good guys and bad guys in business and concludes that things are often not what they seem.

It turns out that there are surprisingly good qualities in classic villains like junk bond king Michael Milken and notorious stock analyst Henry Blodget. And some business celebrities who are widely admired, such as Steve Jobs, are not quite the good guys they appear to be on the surface.

Good Guys and Bad Guys also offers a fresh perspective on some of today's biggest controversies, such as global warming, Apple's iPhone, CEO compensation, the tobacco industry, short sellers, and much more.

Slate - Jack Shafer

Nocera demystifies the world of business with original thinking, brainy reporting, and the ability to see around corners. . . . Nocera knows that persuasion isn't about haranguing, that it's better to lead the reader toward your conclusion and depart gracefully rather than hammer him over the head with it.

Read also The Best of Amish Cooking or Guide for the Greedy by a Greedy Woman

Winners Never Cheat: Everyday Values We Learned as Children (But May Have Forgotten)

Author: Jon M Huntsman

Next time someone tells you business can't be done ethically -- corners must be cut, negotiations can't be honest -- hand them Jon Huntsman's new book. He started with practically nothing, and made it to Forbes'list of America's Top 100 richest people. Huntsman's generous about sharing the credit, but in the 21st century, he's the nearest thing to a self-made multi-billionaire. Now, he presents the lessons of a lifetime: a passionate, inspirational manifesto for returning to the days when your word was your bond, a handshake was sacred, and swarms of lawyers weren't needed to back it up. This is no mere exhortation: it's a practical business book about how to listen to your moral compass, even as others ignore theirs. It's about how you build teams with the highest values, share success, take responsibility, and earn the rewards that only come with giving back. Huntsman's built his career and fortune on these principles. You don't live these principles just to 'succeed': you live them because they're right. But in an age of non-stop business scandal, Huntsman's life proves honesty is more than right: it's the biggest competitive differentiator.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
	Foreword
Ch. 1	Lessons from the sandbox	1
Ch. 2	Check your moral compass	17
Ch. 3	Play by the rules	31
Ch. 4	Setting the example	45
Ch. 5	Keep your word	69
Ch. 6	Pick advisors wisely	87
Ch. 7	Get mad, not even	105
Ch. 8	Graciousness is next to Godliness	119
Ch. 9	Your name is on the door	137
Ch. 10	The obligation to give back	151
	Conclusion : the bottom line	171
	Afterword	181

How to Build a Network of Power Relationships or Do You Matter

How to Build a Network of Power Relationships

Author: Harvey Mackay

and/or stickers showing their discounted price. More about bargain books

Book about: The Power of Place or Purity and Exile

Do You Matter?: How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company

Author: Robert Brunner

“Definitely, a game changer! Design experience is the power shift to our era what mass marketing was to the last century.”

John Sculley former CEO, Pepsi and Apple

“Great design is about creating a deep relationship with your customers. If you don’t, you’re roadkill. This book shows you how and much, much more. Be prepared to have your mind blown.”

Bill Burnett Executive Director, Design Program, Stanford University

“Design is the last great differentiator, and yet so few really understand it. Do You Matter? offers a marvelous series of direct, in-your-face observations and drives home the means to an absolutely integrated design strategy.”

Ray Riley Design GM, Entertainment and Devices, Microsoft

“This book will challenge you to ask and answer what arguably are the most important questions an executive can ponder today. So open up.”

Noah Kerner CEO, Noise and coauthor, Chasing Cool

More and more companies are coming to understand the competitive advantage offered by outstanding design. With this, you can create products, services, and experiences that truly matter to your customers' lives and thereby drive powerful, sustainable improvements in business performance. But delivering great designs is not easy. Many companies accomplish it once, or twice; few do it consistently. The secret: building a truly design-driven business, in which design is central to everything you do. Do You Matter? shows how to do precisely that. Legendary industrialdesigner Robert Brunner (who laid the groundwork for Apple's brilliant design language) and Stewart Emery (Success Built to Last) begin by making an incontrovertible case for the power of design in making emotional connections, deepening relationships, and strengthening brands. You'll learn what it really means to be "design-driven" and how that translates into action at Nike, Apple, BMW and IKEA. You'll learn design-driven techniques for managing your entire experience chain; define effective design strategies and languages; and learn how to manage design from the top, encouraging "risky" design innovations that lead to entirely new markets. The authors show how (and how not) to use research; how to extend design values into marketing, manufacturing, and beyond; and how to keep building on your progress, truly "baking" design into all your processes and culture.

Publishers Weekly

In this mostly well-argued book, industrial design expert Brunner and corporate consultant Emery (Success Built to Last) put forth a design manifesto: building a successful company is not just about the shiny end product but about designing every aspect of the customer's experience. By paying just as much attention to store design, Web sites and customer support as to the product or service being sold, a company can build an emotional relationship with its customers and so secure market share for life. They contend that design should influence every single business decision and-if done right-will lead consumers to become truly invested, and willing to pay extra. The authors return again and again to several well-known brand names as exemplars of their theory. Ikea, Samsung and Whole Foods are all given props, though highest praise is reserved for Brunner's old employer, Apple, so much so that at times this book reads like an Apple promotional product. Combining their knowledge of design, organizational structure, branding and product placement, the authors have essentially repackaged a simple idea: the customer's feelings matter. (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Microeconomics or Problems in Contract Law

Microeconomics

Author: Robert Pindyck

KEY BENEFIT: This book is well known for its coverage of modern topics (Game theory, Economics of Information, and Behavioral Economics), clarity of its writing style and graphs, and integrated use of real world examples.

KEY TOPICS: The emphasis on relevance and application to both managerial and public-policy decision-making are focused goals of the book. This emphasis is accomplished by including MANY extended examples that cover such topics as the analysis of demand, cost, and market efficiency; the design of pricing strategies; investment and production decisions; and public policy analysis.

Economists and strategists looking to stay current with economic information.

Table of Contents:

 

Part I.    Introduction: Markets and Prices

Chapter 1.              Preliminaries

Chapter 2.              The Basics of Supply and Demand

Part II.  Producers, Consumers, and Competitive Markets

Chapter 3.              Consumer Behavior

Chapter 4.              Individual and Market Demand

Chapter 5.              Uncertainty and Consumer Behavior

Chapter 6.              Production

Chapter 7.              The Cost of Production

Chapter 8.              Profit Maximization and Competitive Supply

Chapter 9.              The Analysis of Competitive Markets

Part III.                        Market Structure and Competitive Strategy

Chapter 10.          Market Power: Monopoly and Monopsony

Chapter 11.          Pricing with Market Power

Chapter12.          Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly

Chapter 13.          Game Theory and Competitive Strategy

Chapter 14.          Markets for Factor Inputs

Chapter 15.          Investment, Time, and Capital Markets

Part IV.                       Information, Market Failure, and the Role of Government

Chapter 16.          General Equilibrium and Economic Efficiency

Chapter 17.          Markets with Asymmetric Information

Chapter 18.          Externalities and Public Goods

Appendix: The Basics of Regression

Glossary

Answers to Selected Exercises

Photo Credits

Index

Book review: The Economics of Science and Technology or Economics of Regulation and Antitrust

Problems in Contract Law: Cases and Materials

Author: Charles L Knapp

Adaptable for instructors with various teaching styles, PROBLEMS IN CONTRACT LAW: Cases and Materials provides a balanced approach to traditional case analysis, problem-based instruction, and theoretical inquiry. Now in its Sixth Edition, this casebook offers a highly intelligent, contemporary treatment of contract law and maintains the success of its previous editions, in part, by including a variety of perspectives and contractual settings.

This edition retains the great features that have made the book a dependable source. It:

• incorporates a balanced blend of traditional and contemporary cases
• includes explanatory notes and text that help students place cases in a larger context and explore related points
• offers significant treatment of the CISG
• maintains the Fifth Edition¿s reflection of complexity of current 21st century contract law with its varied strains and constant flux
• provides three accompanying ancillaries: 1. an outstanding, detailed Teacher's Manual with sample syllabi for various credit courses, sample lesson plans, specific questions, and detailed analyses of all problems in the book 2. a companion statutory and case supplement: Rules of Contract Law, 2007¿2008 Edition (available August 2007) 3. a website with related material for instructors¿ use

Many updates make this an even more valuable source for your classroom. The Sixth Edition:

• reorganizes chapters 2 and 3 dealing with the traditional basis for contract formation and liability under other theories
• presents new material examining the strainsincreasingly exerted on the conventional contract law system over the past 10-15 years by new forms of contracting (electronic, etc.) and by the increased use of mandatory arbitration clauses in mass adhesion contracting (e.g., banks, communications providers, hospitals)
• provides increased flexibility for professors who prefer to reorder the chapters rather than teach them in a more linear sequence
• shortens the notes, relocating student-oriented material to the website and professor-oriented material to the Teacher's Manual

;

Inside Steves Brain or Its Not How Good You Are Its How Good You Want to Be

Inside Steve's Brain

Author: Leander Kahney

An insider's guide to the unique leadership style of Steve Jobs, the driving force behind the success of Apple and Pixar

Steve Jobs is technology's most famous CEO, the man who revolutionized computers in the 1970s and 80s (with the Apple II and the Mac), animated movies in the 1990s (with Pixar), and digital music in the 2000s (with the iPod and iTunes). He's also one of the most controversial CEOs in history, allegedly throwing epic tantrums, firing staff in elevators, and taking credit for other people's achievements.

So what's the real story? According to Leander Kahney, who has covered Jobs since the early 1990s as a reporter, editor, and book author, he's a fascinating bundle of contradictions.

He's an elitist who thinks most people are bozos—but he makes gadgets so easy to use, a bozo can master them.

He's a mercurial obsessive with a filthy temper—but he forges deep partnerships with creative geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive, and John Lasseter.

He's a Buddhist and antimaterialist—but he produces mass-market products in Asian factories, and he promotes them with absolute mastery of the crassest medium, advertising.

In short, Jobs has embraced the personality traits that some consider flaws—narcissism, perfectionism, total faith in his intuition—to lead Apple and Pixar to triumph against steep odds. And in the process, he has become a self-made billionaire.

After interviewing more Apple insiders than any previous author, Kahney has distilled the principles that guide Jobs as he launches killer products, attracts fanatically loyal customers, and manages some of the world's most powerful brands.

Publishers Weekly

Throughout his storied Silicon Valley career, Apple CEO and Pixar Studios founder Steve Jobs has been labeled, among other things, an egomaniac, a Zen Buddhist, a business mastermind, a sociopath and a music mogul. Blogger, author and Wired News editor Kahney, who has chronicled Apple in previous books (The Cult of Mac), attempts to plumb the depths of Jobs's prodigious mind in this engrossing biography. The author devotes much time to the sensational aspects of Jobs' life, including his demeaning and ferocious interactions with employees, his relentless high-mindedness and fanatical attention to detail, clearly demonstrating how his tyrannical and perfectionist impulses have have shaped the award-winning designs and consumer-friendly products that have made Apple a juggernaut. Though it doesn't penetrate the Mac man's psyche too deeply, and sections on tangential figures like Apple design guru Jonathan Ive and Apple Store visionary Ron Johnson can meander, those searching for a telling portrait of Jobs's management style and its impact on Apple will not be left wanting.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents:

Introduction 1

1 Focus: How Saying "No" Saved Apple 15

2 Despotism: Apple's One-Man Focus Group 45

3 Perfectionism: Product Design and the Pursuit of Excellence 68

4 Elitism: Hire Only A Players, Fire the Bozos 107

5 Passion: Putting a Ding in the Universe 150

6 Inventive Spirit: Where Does the Innovation Come From? 174

7 Case Study: How It All Came Together with the iPod 221

8 Total Control: The Whole Widget 240

Acknowledgments 269

Notes 271

Index 285

Book about: The Science of Sherlock Holmes or Id Rather Teach Peace

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be

Author: Paul Arden

Its Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be is a handbook of how to succeed in the world a pocket bible for the talented and timid to help make the unthinkable and the impossible possible. The worlds top advertising guru, Paul Arden, offers up his wisdom on issues as diverse as problem solving, responding to a brief, communicating, playing your cards right, making mistakes and creativity, all endeavours that can be applied to aspects of modern life. This book provides a unique insight into the world of advertising and is a quirky compilation of quotes, facts, pictures, wit and wisdom, packed into easy-to-digest, bite-sized spreads. If you want to succeed in life or business, this is a must.