The book Head First PMP: A Brain-Friendly Guide to Passing the Project Management Professional Exam from O'Reilly Media is a refreshing addition to a Project Manager's bookshelf. The book gives a general overview of project management covering many aspects. Although marketed as a PMP exam manual, it includes many subjects, practical examples from the PM life cycle and it is not a traditional “exam cram book”.
The book is valuable for all since it strengthens many different aspects and skills needed for PM engagement. The content of Head First PMP is combined with more than 80 activities, examples, and stories with more than one point of view created to engage both sides of the brain since the more active the brain, the more likely it is to learn and remember.
Table of Contents
Head First PMP covers most of the important subjects of the Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide - PMBOK. It seems like this book is intended to be a complementary book to the Guide – it serves as an enabler, helper, initiator and supporting manual. The book easily covers many aspects concerning the PM lifecycle, according to PMBOK Guide terminology and methodologies.
Head First PMP includes interesting story-like explanations on the following skill levels:
- Project Integration Management
- Project Risk Management
- Quality Management
- Scope Management
- Procurement Management
- Communication Management
- Time Management
- Cost Management
- Human Resources Management.
Some of the key subjects covered in the book include differentiation of company structure such as functional, project-based, and matrix, and extensive definition on the Iron triangle – scope, cost, time and quality.
Moreover, it explains briefly in an incredibly understandable manner the six Integration Management processes that are listed as the project manager’s “core” responsibilities in the PMBOK Guide. This book provides basic points of Work Breakdown Structure, activity definition list, and diagrams, advanced time planning and management, estimation formulas including estimated project value and cost estimating, quality control, HRM (RACI / organization diagrams, staffing, motivating), while the risk management is covered in a separate chapter and includes an introduction, definition, management, and mitigation techniques.
Head First PMP is designed for people who are already project managers, have a few-year experience, but they still have not passed the PMP exam. It is for people who want to learn, understand, remember, and apply important project management concepts in order to execute better outcomes when managing a project.
Keep in mind that this book is a learning experience, not a reference book. As a learning experience and nontraditional book, the authors incorporated unconventional and multiple teaching methods that will boost your memory and keep your focus on track. They used:
- Pictures because the brain is tuned for visuals and the combination of text and pictures works more effectively for memorizing items.
- Redundancy because saying the same thing in different ways produced with different media and multiple senses increases the chances that the content will get coded in more areas in your brain.
- Explanations in unexpected ways because the brain adopts novelty more efficiently.
- Conversational style because the brain pays more attention when it believes that you are in a conversation.
The first thing that strikes the reader – especially those not used to the Head... O'Reilly series – is the visual richness such as charts, handmade drawings, comics, a lot of play with the text and illustrations. The design, in general, is very accessible, usable but unconventional. The unconventionality, on the other hand, makes this book look "unprofessional" but only to the point when you take the book into your hands and try to read it.
The author used an easy and humorous approach that makes the subjects more comprehensible. If used for certification purposes you may get the wrong impression that the book covers the whole material, while it simply serves as an initiation to the PM knowledge certification cycle.
The last chapter of this book may be the most interesting part because it offers a full-length sample of the PMP exam.
What we like the most is the activities, and ‘There are No Dumb Questions’ parts. The exercises and activities are not just piled-up parts. In fact, they are part of the core content of the book whose purpose is to help you understand the PM concepts, improve your memory, and apply the things that you have learned. On the other hand, ‘There are No Dumb Questions’ sections teach us that every question is valuable, and every answer broadens up our insights for the PM world.
Not only this book is a sight for sore eyes, but it is very helpful when you are preparing for the PMP exam. The authors recommend that you use it together with the PMBOK Guide. You can buy it from the Amazon store.
Do you like this book? Have you already read it? Feel free to share your option about Head First PMP in the comments section at the end.
Jennifer Greene and Andrew Stellman have been building software together since 1998. Andrew comes from a programming background and has managed teams of requirements analysts, designers, and developers. With her testing background, Jennifer has managed teams of architects, developers, and testers. She has led multiple large-scale outsourced projects. Between the two of them, they have managed every aspect of software development. Andrew and Jennifer formed Stellman & Greene Consulting in 2003, with a focus on project management, software development, management consulting, and software process improvement. They have worked in a wide range of industries, including finance, telecommunications, media, non-profit, entertainment, natural language processing, science and academia.
This book reivew was written by Lidija Magdeska