Book review: “Peopleware” by DeMarco and Lister
January 18th, 2004 at 12:07 pm“Peopleware: Productive projects and teams” seems to be the cult book on
software management. So, after reading and hearing
many favorable reviews I decided to read it.
The book talks about a very familiar subject, but
from an unfamiliar angle. The issue of programmer’s
work quality - what affects it and how to improve it,
is a well-chewed issue in software engineering books.
Peopleware takes a differenct side, and looks at this
topic from the perspective of programmer managers and
not programmers themselves.
The authors have many useful insights, on the topics
of office environment (probably the most thorough treatment
of this subject I’ve ever read), “jelling teams together”,
picking the right people and making work fun. I found that the
8th chapter - “You never get anything done around here
between 9 and 5″ has expecially struck a cord with me - it
was a sheer pleasure to read and to agree with.
On the bad side, I think the book re-chews certain subjects
too much. Maybe an experienced manager would understand the
fine distinctions, but not a mere code-monkey like me. I’ve
read the 2nd edition, which has extra 8 chapters in the end,
and found them almost completely repeating the other contents
of the book. I guess the desire to earn extra money on a 2nd
edition are greater than the desire to keep the book more
complete and non-repeating. Also, one could not help to wonder - if these
guys (Lister and DeMarco) are so smart, how come they’re not big-shot
managers in big firms ? They work as consultants for many years, but
what is exactly the role of a consultant in this business ? Just go around
firms and tell managers how they better manage ? As they say, those who
can work - work. Those who can’t - teach. (and those who can’t teach - teach
sports, but that’s another issue).
All in all, I enjoyed most parts of the book. I don’t think it’s necessary
for non-managers to read it, while managers could benefit from it. Sadly,
although many things said in the book are true, they’re not always easy
to implement, so people just complain about these things but they eventually
stay the same. I’d really like to work under a manager who not only read
“Peopleware”, and not only agreed with it, but also implemented at least
some of the advices stated there in his team.
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