Peopleware asserts that most software development projects fail because of failures within the team running them. This strikingly clear, direct book is written for software development-team leaders and managers, but it’s filled with enough commonsense wisdom to appeal to anyone working in technology. Authors Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister include plenty of illustrative, often amusing anecdotes; their writing is light, conversational, and filled with equal portions of humor and wisdom, and there is a refreshing absence of “new age” terms and multistep programs. The advice is presented straightforwardly and ranges from simple issues of prioritization to complex ways of engendering harmony and productivity in your team. Peopleware is a short read that delivers more than many books on the subject twice its size.
Customer Reviews
Very disappointing:
I expected the book to contain practical advice. The book covered many undesirable situations and business settings. There were no recommendations made on how to improve a bad situation. The book merely reported on the bad environment. If you are in an unpleasant work environment and want to know there may be others worse off then you, you may like this book.
It’s supposed to be productive, satisfying fun to work:
This book is a collection of short essays on how real people’s productivity in software industry is affected. It is about human aspects of software development. There is a great variety in the material for such a small volume (about 250 pages). For example, it covers this:
1. The key to software development is people. People are not drones nor they are easily replaceable. They work by themselves and require not constant pushing, but careful motivation. If you don’t trust your people you are in trouble. People are a capital investment.
2. Mind-intensive jobs require concentration, hence a private and quiet environment. Breaking the worker’s flow leads to frustration and dive of effectiveness.
3. Teams require efforts to form and keep running, but the effect could be miraculous. There is nothing that could stop a running team. (Btw, I tend to call this a locomotive force myself).
4. Methodologies (the big-M ones) don’t matter, same for the processes. Technologies and stuff, they never replace people who really understand and love what they are doing.
The book is of most interest to project managers or even upper level managers (may all our managers follow these advises please ?).
What can you do with the book being a software developer ? Not much, just look around and see if you like it where you work now. And take actions.
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If you’ve smiled ruefully at any of the characterizations in this book, it’s time now to stop smiling anf start taking corrective action. … It’s supposed to be productive, satisfying fun to work.
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The second edition differs from the original book in that an all new part VI is added, a few short chapters. Written many years later in a perceivably different tone. It’s not just that the authors admit in its preface
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The first five parts were written by two yongish middle-aged consultants who spent most of their time working at the project level, part VI is written by two gnarled and grizzled old consultants who now spend appreciably more of their time working at organizational levels. … Part VI is concerned with with the design of entire organizations that include development work.
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but it is also that it is written in less confident and undoubted way. I see it as good, after all there is no universal truth, it is all just a food to the reader’s thoughts.
And this is a great food too.
Somewhat disappointing but still worth a read:
Providing an overall rating for this book was extremely difficult, and writing this book review was not an easy task. This difficulty is due to the nature of “Peopleware”. This DeMarco work enjoys what appears to be a solid 5-star rating, and to some degree this is a very reasonable collective assessment. Without discussing at length all of the reasons I think this book should instead be assigned less than 5-stars, I think my reasons fall into two categories: (1) the original work was penned in 1987, and due to the industry pervasiveness of many of the ideas presented by the authors, a lot of the material can no longer be considered extraordinary, and (2) the cohesiveness of each chapter and the flow from chapter to chapter is less than optimal - in other words, it is a bit choppy. Now I realize that there exist many in the software industry that can gain great strides in their respective workplaces by reading this book and understanding how best to apply the provided advice, which is why I give this work 4-stars rather than 3-stars, but I must say that I was just disappointed by all the hype about this book, from a year-2007 perspective. And simple math obviously will conclude that 20 years have passed since the original publication. The 8 new chapters added by the authors in 1999 really do not communicate many ground-shaking ideas. In my opinion, Chapter 33 is the only one of these new chapters that personally provided me any insight. And the premise of this lone chapter is simply that “the ultimate management sin is wasting people’s time”. The simplistic line graphs that accompany this chapter provide some substance to the discussion about project staffing, but again this chapter still seems to be geared toward individuals who do not bother to keep up with the insight shared in industry periodicals. Despite all of these drawbacks, however, there are some strong areas of the book that are worth reading by all software industry professionals. These strong areas are more comparable to the content of timeless classics like “The Mythical Man Month”, “Waltzing with Bears” (also by DeMarco and Lister), or “Death March” (see my reviews for all of these books), and are worth reading even if just to provide discussion starters within your organization. These chapters include “Vienna Waits for You” on working smarter and project deadline pressures, “Quality-if Time Permits” where the authors state that “Quality, far beyond that required by the end user, is a means to higher productivity”, “Parkinson’s Law Revisited” on estimations and productivity, “You Never Get Anything Done Around Here Between 9 and 5″, “Brain Time Versus Body Time” on understanding the work day of a technology worker, “The Self-Healing System” on process, and “Teamicide” and “Open Kimono” on team jell. Realize that there are 34 chapters in this book. The bottom line is that this book on productive projects and teams, targeted at a software industry audience - although perhaps not overly impressive from a holistic perspective - is still heartily recommended.
Great read:
Fortunately I found a company that already practices a lot of this, so the momentum against change is not high. If you’re at a company that doesn’t, their ideas do really work.
A timeless software classic, a must read for every manager, and a source of inspiration for practitioners (software developers):
Peopleware: Productivity Projects and Teams [Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister] was first published in 1987 - three decades later it is a revered classic. DeMarco and Lister focus on the human factor of software development (managing people). Through their 30 years of project management experience and consulting they share what went right, and more importantly, what went wrong - so we can learn from their mistakes.
This series of essays cover a wide variety of topics ranging from: office environments that encourage work, the importance of the closed door (read: “cubicles are BAD”), the significance of “flow” and creativity, the dangers and hidden cost of turnover, the importance of hiring and keeping the right people, how to retain employees, how to encourage productivity, the importance of a “jelled team”, the dangers of teamicide, how not to manage people, and many other equally interesting topics.
Some quotes I found interesting:
“No one can really work much more than forty hours, at least not continually and with the level of intensity required for creative work.” Chapter 3
“the process of improving productivity risks worsening turnover” (Chapter 3)
“People under time pressure don’t work better; they just work faster.” (Chapter 3)
“People who had ten years of experience did not outperform those with two years of experience.” (Chapter 8)
“people who perform better tend to gravitate towards organizations that provide a better workplace.” (Chapter 8)
“the total cost of replacing each person is the equivalent of four-and-a-half to five months of employee cost or about twenty percent of the cost of keeping that employee for two years on the job.” (Chapter 16)
This book continues to change the way I view my job, organization, and career. Practitioners and authors like: Steve McConnell, Robert L. Glass, and Joel Spolsky heavily cite the industry-shattering truths originally exposed by Marco and Lister. This book should be on every professional’s shelf along side other classics like: The Mythical Man-Month, and Code Complete.
