Peopleware

A new, shiny office. Polished desktops. Comfortable chairs. Floor-to-ceiling windows. A spacious kitchen. You are moving here to make history! A new project is about to start, and your organisation is going to expand. You have butterflies in your stomach. Is everything going to be all right? It feels like a good time to recap Peopleware - Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister.

Our industry, technological in nature, has far more sociological problems and challenges. The tar pit swallows yet another project, not because we couldn't figure out the technical parts, but because the people-oriented aspects had the lowest priority. Peopleware is about teams and individuals, about the people of the office - the "white collars". It's about bosses and employees, leaders and managers. It's about how, why, where, and what are our daily working activities about, how every bit of surrounding environment affects them.

Here is a hard truth about reviewing the book: I couldn't make it! There are 39 chapters in "Peopleware". And although they are grouped into six parts, and every chapter is rather short, the breadth of topics is enormous! The chapters are basically essays dedicated to a certain topic, and almost every chapter could be a book of its own!

If you think, that you know and have seen it all, did you give much though to the office environment? Did you know that people who program while listening to music easily miss obvious solutions? Or, how about hiring and letting people go? Is the cost of turnover as low as you see it? Do you remember to manage the obvious non-performance risks? What it takes to grow a jelled team, which can read each other's minds when working together? And many more questions for which Peopleware has answers backed up with studies and the enormous experience of the authors.

Every chapter is full of discoveries. I highly recommend this book for leaders, managers and employees alike, because Peopleware is about betters ways that concern us all.

If there was only a single advice from the book I could take, here it is:

• Hire the right people.
• Put them together into a fertile environment.
• Give room for learning, for trial and error.
• Help them grow towards company targets and their personal goals.
• And stay out of the way :)