Peopleware

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Peopleware - Productive Projects and Teams (ISBN 0-932633-43-9) is a popular 1987 book, written by software consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, on the inside world of software developing teams, in a manner such as to highlight the real-world conflicting natures between individual work perspective and corporate ideology. Peopleware may be compared to the movie Office Space, but with statistics, models, and theories. Some describe the book as an anti-Dilbert manifesto. Topics include team gelling, group chemistry, corporate entropy, flow time, "teamicide" and workspace theory (for optimization).

[edit] Overview

Peopleware is a popular book about project management. The first chapter of the book claims, "The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature." The book approaches sociological or 'political' problems such as team 'jelling', quiet in the work environment, and the high cost of turnover.

The authors presented most subjects as principles backed up by some concrete story or other information. As an example, the chapter "Spaghetti Dinner" presents a story (fictional, but similar to true stories) of a manager inviting a new team over for dinner and then having them buy and prepare the meal as a team, in order to produce a first team success. Other chapters use real-life stories or cite various studies to illustrate the principles being presented.