Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams Author: Tom DeMarco | Language: English | ISBN:
B00DY5A8X2 | Format: EPUB
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams Description
“Peopleware has long been one of my two favorite books on software engineering. Its underlying strength is its base of immense real experience, much of it quantified. Many, many varied projects have been reflected on and distilled; but what we are given is not just lifeless distillate, but vivid examples from which we share the authors’ inductions. Their premise is right: most software project problems are sociological, not technological. The insights on team jelling and work environment have changed my thinking and teaching. The third edition adds strength to strength.”
— Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., Kenan Professor of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Author of The Mythical Man-Month and The Design of Design
“Peopleware is the one book that everyone who runs a software team needs to read and reread once a year. In the quarter century since the first edition appeared, it has become more important, not less, to think about the social and human issues in software develop¿ment. This is the only way we’re going to make more humane, productive workplaces. Buy it, read it, and keep a stock on hand in the office supply closet.”
—Joel Spolsky, Co-founder, Stack Overflow
“When a book about a field as volatile as software design and use extends to a third edition, you can be sure that the authors write of deep principle, of the fundamental causes for what we readers experience, and not of the surface that everyone recognizes. And to bring people, actual human beings, into the mix! How excellent. How rare. The authors have made this third edition, with its additions, entirely terrific.”
—Lee Devin and Rob Austin, Co-authors of The Soul of Design and Artful Making
- File Size: 1235 KB
- Print Length: 233 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0321934113
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
- Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 3 edition (July 15, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00DY5A8X2
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,067 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #14
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Computers & Technology > Programming > Software Design > Software Development - #29
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Teams - #63
in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Software Design, Testing & Engineering > Software Development
- #14
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Computers & Technology > Programming > Software Design > Software Development - #29
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Teams - #63
in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Software Design, Testing & Engineering > Software Development
The main goal of this review is to highlight parts of the book and provide a personal experience that relates to them. This entire book is made of real world scenarios, but I will only be able to hit a few in a review. I have had the opportunity to be on many different types of projects during my career. I have been on a project where it was just me and a steering committee, projects that involved several teams around the world, and on teams ranging from 1 other developer to over 30. The one common thread through all these projects is that the highest risk was the people on the project.
With the rapid speed at which technology is changing I have found only one way to ensure it works as advertised, Proof of Concepts. The same holds true of my development teams when I have no history with them. With the rapidly changing skill sets out there today, there is only one way to ensure your team has what it takes, Proof of Concept (POC) them.
Proof of Concepts (POC) plays an important role in not only testing your choice of technology and architecture, but of your development team as well. There is no doubt that people are nowhere close to being as predictable as software components. Software components are lucky; they don't have emotions or free will. It is however fairly easy to read a person's skill levels when what they are making has a predictable outcome.
One of my projects were I POC'd my team we were using the Composite UI Application Block (CAB) from Microsoft's pattern & practices group. I had 3 developers on the team. Each was given an equal workload which included building a complete smart client module from the UI to the DB. The technology proof of concept had already been done at this point, so I knew the technology worked as advertise.
This book should be the first book for any IT manager seeking to optimize their software team's productivity in a sustainable manner. Rather than emphasizing a manager's role in software development as top-down, DeMarco and Lister stress that a successful manager primarily removes the institutional barriers to productivity so their software developers can excel. The authors challenge the traditional modular views of software developers as interchangeable cogs and software development as a factory line process. They also challenge the effectiveness of traditional project management techniques such as excessive overtime, top-down team motivation and artificially tight project deadlines. This book is straight-forward and enjoyable read for anyone involved in the business of software development that gives a no-nonsense approach to effective management techniques.
Software development is primarily a creative process not a factory assembly line process; otherwise it would have been automated long ago. Peopleware is full of practical advice supported by empirical evidence on how managers can enable their software teams to achieve their potential in a sustainable manner. Rather than promising a silver bullet fix to improve productivity by 1000% immediately, the authors stress that a successful manager's primary roles are as team cheerleader and enabler rather than factory manager overseeing widget assemblers (see Chapter 10: Brain Time versus Body Time).
From emphasizing the importance of providing a workplace environment conducive to creative development to challenging the most common project management delusions, the authors make a compelling case on why a lot of managers are approaching software development in the most detrimental manner possible.
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