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Preface

by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

Adapted from Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd ed. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. See below for copyright notice.

If you have ever undertaken a major development effort, you almost certainly know the wisdom of the adage, "Build one to throw away." It's only after you're finished that you know how the thing really should have been done. You seldom get to go back and do it right again, of course, but it would be nice.

This same idea can be applied to whole careers. Between the two of us, we've spent nearly thirty years managing projects or consulting on project management. Most of what we've learned, we've learned from doing it wrong the first time. We've never had the luxury of managing any of those projects over again to do it entirely right. Instead, we've written this book.

It's put together as a series of short essays, each one about a particular garden path that managers are led down, usually to their regret. What typically lures them into error is some aspect of management folklore, a folklore that is pervasive, and loudly articulated, but often wrong. We've been lured down all those garden paths ourselves. If the book succeeds, it will help you to avoid at least some of them.

The folklore is full of easy remedies: Take the worker's estimate and double it. Keep the pressure on. Don't let people work at home, they'll goof off. The remedies suggested in these pages are anything but easy. They draw your attention to the complex requirements of human individuality, to the highly political arena of the office environment, to the puzzle of keeping good people, to the intriguing, sometimes exasperating subject of teams, and finally to the elusive concept of fun.

Since this is a very personal work for us, we have elected from time to time to retain our individual voices. Whenever a singular voice is used in the text, the initials indicated will let you know which of the authors is speaking.

The body of the text contains no citations or footnotes. Sources of quoted material and other explanatory matter are presented in the Notes section, keyed to the page number and to the Bibliography, where complete references are provided.

Tom DeMarco

Timothy Lister

Camden, Maine

New York, New York

September 1987

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: This excerpt from Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd ed. [ISBN:0-932633-43-9] appears by permission of Dorset House Publishing. Copyright © 1999 by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. All rights reserved. See {http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html}. The material contained in this file may be shared for noncommercial purposes only, nonexclusively, provided that this Copyright Notice always appears with it. This material may not be combined with advertisements, online or in print, without explicit permission from Dorset House Publishing. For copies of the printed book or for permissions, contact Dorset House Publishing, 1-800-342-6657, 212-620-4053, http://www.dorsethouse.com, info@dorsethouse.com, New: 3143 Broadway, Suite 2B, New York, NY 10027 USA. Additional rights limitations apply, as presented in the Legal Disclaimer posted at http://www.dorsethouse.com/legal.html.

 

 

 
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