[1]
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
Tom DeMarco
Timothy Lister
£20.99
buy from amazon [1]
This is an interesting book, with much the same feel as Mythical Man Month, but a focus more on managing the team.
Both books promote the theory that programmers vary vastly in productivity, and that you want to hire the good ones!
This book focusses more on the productivity of teams, suggesting that it isn't so much the individual productivity that matters but that of the group.
The authors call on us to recognise that people make or break software projects, we in the busness talk more about technology, but plenty of projects fail without even stumbling on any novelty. Good old office politics can kill off projects even in otherwise benign environments.
It suggests some ays to boost productivity- better environment, less overtime, build a team - and set them loose!
A key theme (which rings true to me) is that any programmer worth thier salt want to be productive, wants to write code and do a good job. The authors suggest that much management is counter productive, the chapter on teamicide is particularly good.
I also enjoyed reading the critiques of "Methodologies" and "Processes" - the capitalisation is important!