(ref.doc)PeopleWare

[DeMarco]
Peopleware - Productive Projects and Teams
Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
Dorset House Publishing Co., New York (NY) 1987

Own opinion:
Funny and full of common sense. Of course I would not sign every
single word (for instance pessimistic upon productivity improvement by
technical means, which may support some exceptions in my opinion).

p 20
[The builders] ... tend to impose quality standards of their own. The
minimum that will satisfy them is more or less the best quality they
have achieved in the past.

p 22
Quality, far beyond that required by the end user, is a means to
higher productivity.

p 30: Lose Fat While Sleeping
One day, in a moment of high silliness, I started clipping ads for
products that claimed to boost performance by one percent or more.
Within a very short time, I had quite a pile. The amazing thing was
the diversity of the means advertised to yield big productivity gains.

p 34
The manager's function is not to make people work, but to make it
possible for people to work.

p 38, in 'The Furniture Police'
'Look at how beautifully uniform everything is!'

p 45
Three rules of thumb seem to apply whenever you measure variations in
performance over a sample of individuals:
- Count on the best people outperforming the worst by about 10:1.
- Count on the best performer being about 2.5 times better than the
  median performer.
- Count on the half that are better-than-median performers outdoing
  the other half by more than 2:1.

p 57
Saving money on space may be costing you a fortune.

p 59
  'Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is
  superior to not measuring it at all.'
Gilb's Law doesn't promise you that measurement will be free or even
cheap, and it may not be perfect - just better than nothing.
(Personal comment: In any situation, there exists a way to perform
measurement that is better than nothing. Not every measurement is.)

p 63: Flow
Flow is a condition of deep meditative involvement. In this state,
there is a gentle sense of euphoria, and one is largely unaware of the
passage of time.

p 82
Imagine that your organization is about to build a complex of new
space. What is the first step in this process? Almost certainly, it is
development of a master plan. [...] The result is sterile uniformity
and space that doesn't work for anyone except the one Ego to whom it
stands as a tribute.

p 83
(Reference to [Alexander: The Timeless Way of Building]) In place of
the master plan, Alexander proposes a meta-plan. It is a philosophy by
which a facility can grow in an evolutionary fashion to achieve the
needs of its occupants. The meta-plan has three parts:
- a philosophy of piecemeal growth
- set of patterns or shared design principles governing growth
- local control of design by those who will occupy the space.
(Personal note: This is object-orientation!)

p 83
(From [Alexander] Note:
 Alexander)
  This natural or organic order emerges when there is perfect balance
  between the need of the individual parts of the environment, and the
  needs of the whole.

p 97
The need for uniformity is a sign of insecurity on the part of
management. Strong managers don't care when team members cut their
hair or whether they wear ties. Their pride is tied only to their
staff's accomplishments.

p 103
The hiring process needs to focus on at least some sociological and
human communication traits. The best way we've discovered to do this
is through the use of auditions for job candidates.
Goals:
- see the candidates' communications skills
- give the future coworkers a part in the hiring process.

p 111
People tend to stay at such companies [the best organizations] because
there is a widespread sense that you are expected to stay.

p 115
The project workers are the ones most familiar with the territory of
the project. If a given direction doesn't make sense to them, it
doesn't make sense at all.

p 115
Big M Methodology is an attempt to centralize thinking. [...] The idea
is simple[r] and crude[r]: the idea that project people aren't smart
enough to do the thinking.

p 116
Voluminous documentation is part of the problem, not part of the
solution.

p 117
Nothing could be more demotivating than the knowledge that management
thinks its workers incompetent.

p 118
Methodologies seek to force convergence through statute. [...] Better
ways to achieve convergence are:
- Training [...]
- Tools [...]
- Peer Review [...] (quality circles, walkthroughs, inspections,
  technology fairs).

p 119
This has come to be called the Hawthorne Effect. Loosely stated, it
says that people perform better when they're trying something new.

p 120
The total of all standards imposed upon your people should be
described in no more than ten pages.

p 121
The challenge of the work is important, but not in and of itself; it
is important because it gives us something to focus on together.

Chapter 19, p 129-131
The Black Team
(Story of a successful team)

p 133
"Teamicide" policies:
- defensive management
- bureaucracy
- physical separation
- fragmentation of people's time
- quality reduction of the product
- phony deadlines
- clique control

Defensive Management, p 133-134
[...] once you have decided to go with a given group, your best tactic
is to trust them.

p 135
The right to be right is [...] irrelevant; it's only the right to be
wrong that makes you free.

p 144
This Open Kimono attitude is the exact opposite of defensive
management. You take no step to defend yourself from the people you've
put in positions of trust.

p 145
If you've got the wrong counsel, you're in deep bananas anyway.

p 147
There are rules and we do break them.

p 153
The group's adherence to to a corporate standard of uniformity is
almost a symbol of the manager's degree of control. [...] The more
comforting it is to the manager, the more it saps the lifeblood of the
team.

p 155
[...] managers are usually not part of the teams they manage. Teams
are made up of peers, equals that function as equals.
[...] 
The structure of a team is a network, not a hierarchy. For all the
deference paid to the concept of *leadership* (a cult word in our
industry), it just doesn't have much place here.

Chaos and Order, p 159
The people down below get to have the real fun of putting things
shipshape.

p 160
...a policy of constructive reintroduction of small amounts of
disorder:
- pilot projects
- war games
- brainstorming
- provocative training expenses
- training, trips, conferences, celebrations and retreats

p 161
What present-day standardization has achieved is a *documentary
consistency* among products, but nothing approaching meaningful
*functional consistency*. In other words, standardization has mainly
homogenized the paperwork associated with the products, rather than
the products themselves.

p 168 (in "the cottage industry phenomenon")
They want to work when they want to work [...]
They've got more freedom, more time off, more choice of work. They're
having more fun. They often make more money.

p 172
"There's something you don't understand my friend. I don't wrestle the
bull."

Waking up Holgar, p 173
It doesn't take much to wake up the giant. If the silliness is gross
enough, people need no more than a gentle catalyst. It may be one
small voice saying, "This is unacceptable." People know it's true.