Hi,
any books on project management/ design you guys can recommend?
I am looking for a practical hands on approach, nothing heavy on theory.
Update
For 1-man development projects, what book would you recommend so I can plan the project, what needs to be done exactly, tasks, estimations, etc.
Making Things Happen: methodology-agnostic (to a larger extent); full of wisdom.
Project management and design are very different specialisms. What type of design do you mean?
Peopleware and The Mythical Man-Month are two of the standard recommendations for (software) Project Management.
I agree with Galwegian - there is very little overlap between pure Project Management and Design.
For a cross-over book I would recommend "Writing Effective Use Cases" by Alistair Cockburn. It's high-level enough to allow involvement as a Project Manager and will give you some insight into how to specify user needs effectively towards developers.
It's not really design, it's not really Project Management, but it's pretty much what happens in between.
My favorite book related to project management is The Art of Project Management, by Scott Berkun. It is written from the perspective of a former Microsoft employee and he talks in great depth about specific "war stories" to tie points together.
It's not so much a book specifically on project management, but it nicely tackles the things you mention in the update to your initial question: Code Complete.
I recently picked up a copy of Pragmatic Studio's Manage It! on a whim. And despite it's rather annoying name has turned out to be fantastic.
The author has managed real software projects, and this book was written about programming projects. Which as we all know are fundamentally different than other industries.
I enjoyed very-much Head First Software Development, very hands-on, lots of funny exercises. The kind of book that you can start applying straight away, very pragmatic.