Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister

First published in 1987, Peopleware immediately became a classic best-seller in the industry, especially in organizations that were beginning to realize that their software development problems had nothing to do with programming languages, software engineering methodologys, or SEI-CMM process maturity. As Bill Clinton might have said at the time, "It's the people, stupid!" How do you recruit, interview, and select the best software people? How do you reward and motivate them? How do you organize them into effective teams? What role does management play in all of this? Everyone has an opinion on these topics, but very few have bothered to assess their own organization, or even to ask whether they want to work for an organization of the sort that Scott Adams lampoons regularly in his Dilbert cartoons. When the first edition appeared, I wrote a review that said "I strongly recommend that you buy one copy of Peopleware for yourself and another copy for your boss. If you are a boss, then buy one for everyone in your department, and buy one for your boss." The advice still holds 12 years later, and my recommendation is even more enthusiastic — the new edition has 8 new chapters, covering such topics as competition, process improvement programs, "teamicide revisited," organizational learning, the concept of "human capital," a discussion of the "ultimate" management sin, and some excellent suggestions on how best to create a software development "community."