Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
Tom di Marco and Timothy Lister. New York: Dorset House,
1987 (revised edition 1999). 238pp. ISBN 0-932633-43-9
Editor’s note: this is the first in an occasional
series of reviews of classic titles. “Classic”,
because the books reviewed continue to be worth reading, many
years after their first publication. In the world of professional
publishing, that is rare. The books’ classic status
also implies they have earned a validity outside the domain
for which they were originally written. In the case below,
a title written by software project managers has gained a
readership in general management.. We welcome any suggestions
for similar classic titles for review.
It’s rare to find a professional book that makes you
laugh out loud: Peopleware, is an example. I noticed people
on the train staring at me as I raced through it. Written
by two management consultants who specialise in project management,
their wide-ranging books is of great interest to anyone who
has ever been fascinated and infuriated by corporate culture
and by crass management.
The authors’ knack is to describe features of the contemporary
corporate environment with an engaging wit that makes the
reader see them freshly. Yes, you find yourself agreeing with
the authors, why do we do that?
For example, I laughed at the chapter on the telephone, the
great interrupter of concentration. The authors describe an
episode where an imaginary Alexander Graham Bell proposes
his new invention, the telephone, to a company board. “Ah,
that’s the beauty of the BellOPhone”, he says
proudly. “No matter what you are involved in at the
time it rings, no mater how engrossed you are, you drop everything
to answer it”
Not surprisingly, the company rejects such a disruptive innovation
out of hand. It’s true: if the telephone were invented
today, companies would never allow it in their buildings.
The telephone is just one of the authors’ many targets,
dismissed so abruptly that you only remember with shame that
you ever introduced them to your suffering team – or
had them introduced by a well-meaning but misguided boss.
Management by objectives, performance bonuses, motivational
posters, Parkinson’s Law, even the term “professional”
is roundly condemned when it is used to impose a dull conformity
on corporate activity. Next time you hear the word used, think
of the authors’ definition: “professional means
unsurprising. You will be considered professional to the extent
you look, act, and think like everyone else, a perfect drone.”
As in, for example “it’s simply not professional
to wear a tie like that!”
Yet it would be a mistake to think of this as an entertainment,
or simply a swipe at obvious targets. It is full of fascinating
suggestions and ideas for managing projects and teams in organisations.
Although the authors specialise in software development, almost
none of the book is specific to developing software and would
apply to any organisation with more than two or three staff.
As the authors emphasise throughout, software development
is almost never a technical problem, but a human one. It’s
just part of the work you try to do, with more or less success,
in an office environment that sometimes seems to be calculated
to prevent you concentrating.
Repeatedly as I read the book I found myself surprised that
I had accepted without question this or that common practice
that is grounded in no good principle whatever. On hiring
new staff, for example: we wouldn’t dream of hiring
a juggler without seeing him or her juggle, so why hire a
programmer (or other member of a professional team) without
getting some demonstration of their professional ability?
Perhaps less widely used is the authors’ suggested technique
that an interview should include the colleagues who the candidate
is going to work with: that he or she talks through a proposal
or demonstration with the future colleagues.
I have some criticisms. The authors ignore their own recommendations
for ignoring unverified research and opinions when they discuss
architecture and working environment. Their insistence on
closed spaces is today perhaps as formulaic as the insistence
in the seventies and eighties on open-space office environments:
in truth, neither is perfect. Their potty proposal, for “organic
architecture” and “meta-plan” for a building,
sounds romantically utopian and impractical. However, it is
no bad thing to read a book that inspires you to agree or
to disagree with enthusiasm. You forgive de Marco and Lister
for a couple of wacky suggestions in return for the number
of times they hit the bulls eye. On overtime, for example:
“we don’t work overtime so much to get the work
done on time as to shield ourselves from blame when the work
inevitably doesn’t get done on time.”
Read this book for a very healthy review of the assumptions
you use when you manage; just be prepared to cause some discussion,
or unrest when you implement the results. Managers don’t
give up the principles they work by without a struggle. In
fact the authors suggest you implement changes one at a time:
humans cannot cope with too much change.
Michael Upshall
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