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Tom DeMarco

Tom DeMarco Books

Software Engineer

Related Quotes

“If you've been in the software business for any time at all, you know that there are certain common problems that plague one project after another. Missed schedules and creeping requirements are not things that just happen to you once and then go away, never to appear again. Rather, they are part of the territory. We all know that. What's odd is that we don't plan our projects as if we knew it. Instead, we plan as if our past problems are locked in the past and will never rear their ugly heads again. Of course, you know that isn't a reasonable expectation.”

Risk Management
Book:Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects
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“There is no such thing as "healthy" competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive. The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative.”

ManagementCompetitionCollaborationManagement Theory2001Knowledge Work
Book:Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
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“If the essential task of middle managers is reinvention, when is that task to be carried out? The answer is, during time that is not used up directing day-to-day business. The fact that managers have time on their hands (i.e., their operations tasks take up less than eight hours per day) gives them time for reinvention. The extra time is not waste, but slack. Without it they could function in only their operational roles. Reinvention would be impossible because the people who could make it happen are just too busy to take the time. Even companies that didn't fire their change centers have hurt themselves by encouraging their middle managers to stay extremely busy. In order to enable change, companies have to learn that keeping managers busy is a blunder. If you have busy managers working under you, they are an indictment of your vision and your capacity to transform that vision into reality. Cut them some slack.”

ManagementManagement Theory2001Middle ManagementSlack
Book:Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
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“Quality takes time and reduces quantity, so it makes you, in a sense, less efficient. The efficiency-optimized organization recognizes quality as its enemy. That's why many corporate Quality Programs are really Quality Reduction Programs in disguise.”

QualityQuality ControlQuality Assurance2001Quality Over QuantityQuality Vs QuantityTotal Quality
Book:Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
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