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• Book review: Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

  - by DigiMortal

     Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is golden classic book that can be considered as mandatory reading for software project managers, team leads, higher level management and board members of software companies. If you make decisions about people then you cannot miss this book. If you are already good on managing developers then this book can make you even better – you will learn new stuff about successful development teams for sure. Why peopleware? Peopleware gives you very good hints about how to build up working environment for project teams where people can really do their work. Book also covers team building topics that are also important reading. As software developer I found practically all points in this book to be accurate and valid. Many times I have found my self thinking about same things and Peopleware made me more confident about my opinions. Peopleware covers also time management and planning topics that help you do way better job on using developers time effectively by minimizing the amount of interruptions by phone calls, pointless meetings and i-want-to-know-what-are-you-doing-right-now questions by managers who doesn’t write code anyway. I think if you follow suggestions given by Peopleware your developers are very happy. I suggest you to also read another great book – Death March by Edward Yourdon. Death March describes you effectively what happens when good advices given by Peopleware are totally ignored or worse yet – people are treated exactly opposite way. I consider also Death March as golden classics and I strongly recommend you to read this book too. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Part 1: Managing the Human Resource Chapter 1: Somewhere Today, a Project Is Failing Chapter 2: Make a Cheeseburger, Sell a Cheeseburger Chapter 3: Vienna Waits for You Chapter 4: Quality-If Time Permits Chapter 5: Parkinson's Law Revisited Chapter 6: Laetrile Part II: The Office Environment Chapter 7: The Furniture Police Chapter 8: "You Never Get Anything Done Around Here Between 9 and 5" Chapter 9: Saving Money on Space Intermezzo: Productivity Measurement and Unidentified Flying Objects Chapter 10: Brain Time Versus Body Time Chapter 11: The Telephone Chapter 12: Bring Back the Door Chapter 13: Taking Umbrella Steps Part III: The Right People Chapter 14: The Hornblower Factor Chapter 15: Hiring a Juggler Chapter 16: Happy to Be Here Chapter 17: The Self-Healing System Part IV: Growing Productive Teams Chapter 18: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of the Parts Chapter 19: The Black Team Chapter 20: Teamicide Chapter 21: A Spaghetti Dinner Chapter 22: Open Kimono Chapter 23: Chemistry for Team Formation Part V: It't Supposed to Be Fun to Work Here Chapter 24: Chaos and Order Chapter 25: Free Electrons Chapter 26: Holgar Dansk Part VI: Son of Peopleware Chapter 27: Teamicide, Revisited Chapter 28: Competition Chapter 29: Process Improvement Programs Chapter 30: Making Change Possible Chapter 31: Human Capital Chapter 32:Organizational Learning Chapter 33: The Ultimate Management Sin Is Chapter 34: The Making of Community Notes Bibliography Index About the Authors

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• Are high office partitions as effective as private offices?

  - by CraigS

  I'm currently reading DeMarco and Lister's Peopleware, and I've been struck (as everyone is) by their comments about noise reduction via using private offices, and the effect this has on productivity. Private offices are probably not going to happen at my workplace, but I'm wondering if high cubicle partitions (say, 6 feet) might be nearly as good? I imagine they wouldn't deflect quite as much noise, but they would have some effect. One down-side is that the center cubicles would have less natural light. That seems quite a big downer to me. I'd be interested to hear what peoples experiences are.

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• Can't find Peopleware anywhere?

  - by ooo

  Many folks say that Peopleware is one of the best books for software professionals and managers, as I see a lot of people recommending it in the "have to read list." The strange thing is that I can't find a bookstore anywhere that actually has it. I found it on Amazon, but Borders, Barnes & Nobles, etc. don't have it and keep telling me it's out of print. Can anyone shed some light on whats going on here? Amazon doesn't stock it, it says its available from a few 3rd party sellers, but I tried two of them and both of them eventually refunded me and cancelled the order after stalling for a month.

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• "A good programmer can be as 10+ times more productive as a mediocre one"

  - by m3th0dman

  I had read an interview with a great programmer (it is not in English) and in it he said that "a great programmer can be as 100 times as good as a mediocre one" giving reason for why good programmers are very well paid and why programming companies give many facilities for their employees. The idea was that there is a very large demand for good programmers, because of the above reason and that's why companies pay very much to bring them. Do you agree with this statement? Do you know any objective facts that could support it? Edit: The question has nothing to do with experience; if you talk about one great programmer with 1 year experience then s/he should be 10 times more productive than a mediocre programmer with 1 year experience. I agree that from certain experience years onwards, things start to dissipate but that's not the purpose of the question.

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• "A good programmer can be as 10+ times more productive than a mediocre one"

  - by m3th0dman

  I had read an interview with a great programmer (it is not in English) and in it he said that "a great programmer can be as 100 times as good as a mediocre one" giving reason for why good programmers are very well paid and why programming companies give many facilities for their employees. The idea was that there is a very large demand for good programmers, because of the above reason and that's why companies pay very much to bring them. Do you agree with this statement? Do you know any objective facts that could support it? Edit: The question has nothing to do with experience; if you talk about one great programmer with 1 year experience then s/he should be 10 times more productive than a mediocre programmer with 1 year experience. I agree that from certain experience years onwards, things start to dissipate but that's not the purpose of the question.

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• Open space office for team work? [closed]

  - by pboy

  An argument I often hear to justify open space office layout is that, being open, it contributes to team work and more collaboration between people. Does it really contributes to team work, compared to private offices? Is there hard data that might support this? Edit: I'm interested in that topic in a programmer's context, a bit like the study made in PeopleWare, which focuses on software development.

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• book about psychology of decision and psychology of human

  - by boos

  I'm a unix developer and i want to make career in project/people management as first step. I think sometimes is better to have good communication skill and in general more human skill to make career more fast. Almost in Italy, a lot of people made career development more fast for his human skill and not for his technical skill. Anyone have read some book about psychology to better manage how people and personality work and to exploit decision making situation in the right way? I have found some interesting book about people personality and psychology of decision, but i am in doubt about the usefulness about reading such book. anyone have some experience in this path ? Anyone have found useful to read similar book about how people work, to manage career development in a more fast way and handle people and decision in a more useful way? i have already read peopleware. The table of content of one of this book have: 1 - Judicment and decision 2 - Euristics and sistematics error 3 - Estimating probability and frequency prediction 4 - Risk and decision 5 - rappresentation and decision 6 - Memory, attention and decision. Etc. what do you think about ?

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• Best non-development book for software developers

  - by Dima Malenko

  What is the best non software development related book that you think each software developer should read? Note, there is a similar, poll-style question here: What non-programming books should programmers read? Update: Peopleware is a great book, must read, no doubt. But it is about software development so does not count. Update: We ended up suggesting more than one book and that's great! Below is summary (with links to Amazon) of the books you should consider for your reading list. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman Getting Things Done by David Allen Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter The Goal and It's Not Luck by Eliyahu M. Goldratt Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky ...to be continued.

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• How to convince my boss that quality is a good thing to have in code?

  - by Kristof Claes

  My boss came to me today to ask me if we could implement a certain feature in 1.5 days. I had a look at it and told him that 2 to 3 days would be more realistic. He then asked me: "And what if we do it quick and dirty?" I asked him to explain what he meant with "quick and dirty". It turns out, he wants us to write code as quickly as humanly possible by (for example) copying bits and pieces from other projects, putting all code in the code-behind of the WebForms pages, stop caring about DRY and SOLID and assuming that the code and functionalities will never ever have to be modified or changed. What's even worse, he doesn't want us do it for just this one feature, but for all the code we write. We can make more profit when we do things quick and dirty. Clients don't want to pay for you taking into account that something might change in the future. The profits for us are in delivering code as quick as possible. As long as the application does what it needs to do, the quality of the code doesn't matter. They never see the code. I have tried to convince him that this is a bad way to think as the manager of a software company, but he just wouldn't listen to my arguments: Developer motivation: I explained that it is hard to keep developers motivated when they are constantly under pressure of unrealistic deadlines and budget to write sloppy code very quickly. Readability: When a project gets passed on to another developer, cleaner and better structured code will be easier to read and understand. Maintainability: It is easier, safer and less time consuming to adapt, extend or change well written code. Testability: It is usually easier to test and find bugs in clean code. My co-workers are as baffled as I am by my boss' standpoint, but we can't seem to get to him. He keeps on saying that by making things more quickly, we can sell more projects, ask a lower price for them while still making a bigger profit. And in the end these projects pay the developer's salaries. What more can I say to make him see he is wrong? I want to buy him copies of Peopleware and The Mythical Man-Month, but I have a feeling they won't change his mind either. A lot of you will probably say something like "Run! Get out of there now!" or "I'd quit!", but that's not really an option since .NET web development jobs are rather rare in the region where I live...

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• Software Company Library

  - by dbemerlin

  Hi. A few days ago i had the idea to create a company library since my company has no training and many developers still develop as they did when they learned it 5 years ago. My hope is that they can lend books, read them and hopefully learn something from them (for example: object oriented programming or unit testing, which noone here knows how to use). After asking around most agreed that it was a good idea, so i brought my books, made a simple printed sheet with "Book A belongs to B" and "Developer A took the Book on dd.mm.yyyy" to get it started. Now i want to get some ideas for Books that i could add to the shelf (sadly from my own money since 100€/month for training is too much money for this multi-million euro company). We develop mostly PHP & MySQL so books specific to this topic would be preferred but i think if people learn other languages they might get ideas on how to develop better with the current language so other books are ok, too. Which books would you recommend? PS: Personally i'd like to add some Project Management books, too, as it's a topic i'm interested in, eventhough i'm just a junior developer (We've got Peopleware already, great book btw).

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• The hidden cost of interrupting knowledge workers

  - by Piet

  The November issue of pragpub has an interesting article on interruptions. The article is written by Brian Tarbox, who also mentions the article on his blog. I like the subtitle: ‘Simple Strategies for Avoiding Dumping Your Mental Stack’. Brian talks about the effective cost of interrupting a ‘knowledge worker’, often with trivial questions or distractions. In the eyes of the interruptor, the interruption only costs the time the interrupted had to listen to the question and give an answer. However, depending on what the interrupted was doing at the time, getting fully immersed in their task again might take up to 15-20 minutes. Enough interruptions might even cause a knowledge worker to mentally call it a day. According to this article interruptions can consume about 28% of a knowledge worker’s time, translating in a $588 billion loss for US companies each year. Looking for a new developer to join your team? Ever thought about optimizing your team’s environment and the way they work instead? Making non knowledge workers aware You can’t. Well, I haven’t succeeded yet. And believe me: I’ve tried. When you’ve got a simple way to really increase your productivity (’give me 2 hours of uninterrupted time a day’) it wouldn’t be right not to tell your boss or team-leader about it. The problem is: only productive knowledge workers seem to understand this. People who don’t fall into this category just seem to think you’re joking, being arrogant or anti-social when you tell them the interruptions can really have an impact on your productivity. Also, knowledge workers often work in a very concentrated mental state which is described here as: It is the same mindfulness as ecstatic lovemaking, the merging of two into a fluidly harmonious one. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task. Yes, coding can be addictive and if you’re interrupting a programmer at the wrong moment, you’re effectively bringing down a junkie from his high in just a few seconds. This can result in seemingly arrogant, almost aggressive reactions. How to make people aware of the production-cost they’re inflicting: I’ve been often pondering that question myself. The article suggests that solutions based on that question never seem to work. To be honest: I’ve never even been able to find a half decent solution for this question. People who are not in this situations just don’t understand the issue, no matter how you try to explain it. Fun (?) thing I’ve noticed: Programmers or IT people in general who don’t get this are often the kind of people who just don’t get anything done. Interrupt handling (interruption management?) IRL Have non-urgent questions handled in a non-interruptive way It helps a bit to educate people into using non-interruptive ways to ask questions: “duh, I have no idea, but I’m a bit busy here now could you put it in an email so I don’t forget?”. Eventually, a considerable amount of people will skip interrupting you and just send an email right away. Some stubborn-headed people however will continue to just interrupt you, saying “you’re 10 meters from my desk, why can’t we just talk?”. Just remember to disable your email notifications, it can be hard to resist opening your email client when you know a new email just arrived. Use Do Not Disturb signals When working in a group of programmers, often the unofficial sign you can only be interrupted for something important is to put on headphones. And when the environment is quiet enough, often people aren’t even listening to music. Otherwise music can help to block the indirect distractions (someone else talking on the phone or tapping their feet). You might get a “they’re all just surfing and listening to music”-reaction from outsiders though. Peopleware talks about a team where the no-interruption sign was placing a shawl on the desk. If I remember correctly, I am unable to locate my copy of this really excellent must-read book. If you have all standardized on the same IM tool, maybe that tool has a ‘do not disturb’ setting. Also some phone-systems have a ‘DND’ (do not disturb) setting. Hide Brian offers a number of good suggestions, some obvious like: hide away somewhere they can’t find you. Not sure how long it’ll be till someone thinks you’re just taking a nap somewhere though. Also, this often isn’t possible or your boss might not understand this. And if you really get caught taking a nap, make sure to explain that your were powernapping. Counter-act interruptions Another suggestion he offers is when you’re being interrupted to just hold up your hand, blocking the interruption, and at least giving you time to finish your sentence or your block/line of code. The last suggestion works more as a way to make it obvious to the interruptor that they really are interrupting your work and to offload some of the cost on the interruptor. In practice, this can also helps you cool down a bit so you don’t start saying nasty things to the interruptor. Unfortunately I’ve sometimes been confronted with people who just ignore this signal and keep talking, as if they’re sure that whatever they’ve got to say is really worth listening to and without a doubt more important than anything you might be doing. This behaviour usually leaves me speechless (not good when someone just asked a question). I’ve noticed that these people are usually also the first to complain when being interrupted themselves. They’re generally not very liked as colleagues, so try not to imitate their behaviour. TDD as a way to minimize recovery time I don’t like Test Driven Development. Mainly for only one reason: It interrupts flow. At least, that’s what it does for me, but maybe I’m just not grown used to TDD yet. BUT a positive effect TDD has on me when I have to work in an interruptive environment and can’t really get into the ‘flow’ (also supposedly called ‘the zone’ by software developers, although I’ve never heard it 1st hand), TDD helps me to concentrate on the tasks at hand and helps me to get back at work after an interruption. I feel when using TDD, I can get by without the need for being totally ‘in’ the project and I can be reasonably productive without obtaining ‘flow’. Do you have a suggestion on how to make people aware of the concept of ‘flow’ and the cost of interruptions? (without looking like an arrogant ass or a weirdo)

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