Book Review: Human Resource Skills For The Project Manager

Human Resource Skills for the Project Manager: The Human Aspects of Project Management, Volume 2


This book by Vijay K. Verma provides a good overview of various project aspects regarding relationships, communication, and human capital in general. I personally found it helpful in the descriptions of various theories out there, and a good starting point to branch out and seek more specific research and information.

The book is split up into 6 main sections: Communication, Motivation, Conflict, Negotiation, Stress, and Leadership. Some of the areas of interest for me I took further and branched out on, and you may recognize some of the topics from posts I have been writing.

Specifically, the communication, motivation, and negotiation chapters prompted me to take further action in seeking out academic and industry research and thoughts on these topics.

This made a great textbook for my HR Project Management class this semester. I recommend it to anyone who wants to be able to better understand these areas within project management as a good place to start on the journey to self-improvement. It may help highlight some counterproductive practices you are engaging in and do not even realize.

It is set up much like you would expect a text book to be however, soft cover and short novel dimensions notwithstanding. It is not something I would classify as an easy or casual read. (It's not quite as dry as the PMBOK guide though!)