Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams - Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister
#1. The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature.
#2. Our successes stem from good human interactions by all participants in the effort, and our failures stem from poor human interactions.
#3. The main reason we tend to focus on the technical rather than the human side of the work is not because it’s more crucial, but because it’s easier to do.
#4. Oh, there might be some benefit in a few extra hours worked on Saturday to meet a Monday deadline, but that’s almost always followed by an equal period of compensatory “undertime” while the workers catch up with their lives.
#5. People under time pressure don’t work better—they just work faster.
#6. The manager’s function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.
#7. ...managers are unlikely to change their people in any meaningful way. People usually don’t stay put long enough, and the manager just doesn’t have enough leverage to make a difference in their nature.
#8. The great manager knows that people can’t be controlled in any meaningful sense anyway.
#9. People really hate change. They really, really do.
#10. Change won’t even get started unless people feel safe...people feel safe when they know they will not be demeaned or degraded for proposing a change, or trying to get through one.
#11. Experience gets turned into learning when an organization alters itself to take account of what experience has shown
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