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Managed Chaos
Naresh Jain's Random Thoughts on Software Development and Adventure Sports
     
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Effect of Methodology with a capital M

Recently I was going through a presentation on PeopleWare. Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister published this fantastic book in 1987 and is till date very valid. If you’ve not read this book I would strongly recommend it.

The book talks about Methodology with a capital M and it’s impact. According to the author, effects of Methodology:

  • a morass of paperwork
  • a paucity of methods
  • an absence of responsibility
  • a general loss of motivation

This is so valid even in today’s world where lots of companies claim they are doing Agile (with a Capital A).

There are some other very interesting quotes in the book which is worth highlighting:

the major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature. [p. 4]

because we go about this work in teams and projects and other tightly knit working groups, we are mostly in the human communication business. our successes stem from good human interactions… and our failures stem from poor human interactions [p. 5]

people are not the same! therefore they are not interchangeable

the manager’s function is not to make people work but to make it possible for people to work [p. 34]

people under pressure don’t work better; they just work faster [p. 18]

quality is free, but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it [p. 23]

organizational busy work tends to expand to ?ll the working day [p. 29]

most organisations don’t set out consciously to kill teams. they just act that way [p. 4]


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