Tom DeMarco

I re-read this book periodically to re-learn some of the many lessons in it. [author: DeMarco] says a lot about "the white space" in your organization and [book: Slack] was one of the books I quoted from in my presentation earlier this year on Managing in the White Space of your Organization. He writes about being a leader, what this really means and what it doesn't mean. He writes about efficiency and effectiveness and how it is easy to have one or the other and very difficult (but ideal) to have both.

And mostly he writes about slack: that extra bit of time to think, to re-invent, to create and communicate, that extra bit of resources that you need to adjust quickly to changing environments.

By being too efficient (going somewhere fast), we sometimes forget about being effective (where are we going?) -- quoting Yogi Berra, he observes "We're lost, but we're making good time."… (more)

For a book written nearly 20 years ago -- in 1995 -- this book has a lot of fresh insights. The book has a lot of good ideas about the people side of software development. Common threads throughout these essays are integrity and practicality. DeMarco cares about doing what works -- and to have success in the long term, what works need to involve integrity in leadership, team work, measurement, and every other aspect of the development process. All that said, there are some essays that are quite dated, hence the 3/5.… (more)