path: root/cliffs_notes/peopleware.md

# I. Managing the human resource

People are different from software.

## 1\. Somewhere today, a project is failing

* 15% of all projects deliver nothing.\
  25% for projects >25 work/years\
  Not for technical reasons, "politics" => sociology

## 2\. Make a cheeseburger, sell a cheeseburger

* Errors should be encouraged
* A project objective is to be ended. Therefore, a project is never steady. Therefore, a project is always changing and there is no steady state
* Need to think more about "why" this task needs to be done rather than how the task must be done

## 3\. Vienna waits for you

* Spanish Theory Management: increase productivity by extracting more work for the $
* Mechanizing development, lowering quality, standardizing procedure reduces enjoyment of work

## 4\. Quality-if time permits

* Self-esteem makes people emotional
* Self-esteem is tied to the quality of our work
* Deadlines conflict with quality
* Manager: Market wants time-to-market over quality
* Builders: want to match their past best achieved quality, more than what the market wants
* But quality is a means to productivity

## 5\. Parkinson's law revisited

* "Work expands to fill the time allocated for it"
* Parkinson was a humorist
* Motivated people do not want to work forever in the same task
* The team can motivate people better than the manager
* Productivity by task estimator. No estimate > Systems analyst (unbiased expert) > Programmer > Programmer + supervisor > Supervisor
* Bureaucratic work does expand

## 6\. Laetrile

* People are desperate to increase productivity, fall to the seven sirens, seven false hopes of software management 
  * Missed something obvious: no
  * Others are succeeding, you are getting outdated, not using the right programming language, need more automation: technical gains affect just a small part of the total effort
  * Need to get to the bottom of the backlog: bottom of the backlog is worthless
  * Workers need more pressure

# II. The office environment

It's hard to increase productivity, but easy to decrease it

## 7\. The Furniture Police

* Optimizing for cost, and uniformity is not productive

## 8\. You never get anything done around here between 9 and 5

* Top performers work in quieter, more private, with less interruption, bigger spaces

## 9\. Saving money on space

* Cost of workplace is a small past of cost of worker

## Intermezzo. Productivity measurement and unidentified flying objects

* Gilb's Law: Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is superior to not measuring it at all
* Individual productivity should only be measured by the invidivual

## 10\. Brain time versus body time

* Interruptions are expensive

## 11\. The telephone

* Ensure people attend their email with reasonable frequency (3/day) to allow prioritizing non-interrupting communication

## 12\. Bring back the door

* People work better in quiet environments

## 13\. Taking umbrella steps

* Developers should design the working environment
* Windows
* Provide outdoor space, public space

# III. The right people

* Get the right people, make them happy, let them work

## 14\. The Hornblower factor

* Difficult to improve people, choose well
* Appearances << capabilities
* Do not hire for uniformity in the company
* No dress codes

## 15\. Hiring a juggler

* Interviews are about performing, not talking
* Portfolios
* Aptitude tests are not for hiring, they are for self-assessment
* Audition on topic related to work selected by the candidate

## 16\. Happy to be here

* Turnover is expensive and leads to short term planning 
  * Needs quick promotions, leads to inexperienced people doing the building
* Company moves are the worst
* Good companies *retrain*

## 17\. The self-healing system

* Humans can improvise, automated process cannot
* Big M Methodologies automate 
  * No improvisation, so must grow to cover all cases
  * Lots of documents
* Big M Methodologies take responsibilities away from people into the Methodology
* Big M Methodologies lead to malicious compliance- follow the Methodology even if it has bad outcomes
* Convergence of methods is good, easier to onboard, etc.
* Achieve convergence of methods by training, tooling and peer review, without forcing a Methodology
* Hawthorne Effect: people perform better when trying new approaches
* Do new things on every project to benefit from the Hawthorne Effect
* But have a 10-page max. standard

# IV. Growing productive teams

* Teams working as one on a challenge are the objective. Help the team form

## 18\. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts

* Jell: a jelled team is more than the sum of its members. Jelled teams enjoy the work
* Jelled teams have a common objective, low turnover, strong sense of identity, feel elite, join ownership of product, enjoyment

## 19\. The black team

* The black team tested other teams code.
* The black team outlived the original members
* Identity: dressed in black, some evil mustaches, mystique

## 20\. Teamicide

* You can't make a team jell, but you can prevent it from jellying 
  * Defensive management: preventing people from making mistakes. If the team cannot do the job, they cannot do the job.
  * Bureaucracy
  * Physical separation
  * Fragmentation of people's time: the team must be together most of the time
  * Quality reduction of the product: quality jells a team
  * Phony deadlines
  * Clique control (preventing the team for working together in further projects)

## 21\. A spaghetti dinner

* Small successes lead to bigger successes
* Perform small projects, demos, etc.

## 22\. Open kimono

* Trust the team
* Get them out of the office
* Let skunkworks projects happen
* Let people choose their peers and project
* Natural authority by being competent

## 23\. Chemistry for team formation

* Some organizations have environments that favor team formation
* Managers do not seem busy nor manage a lot, they maintain the chemistry
* Chemistry building 
  * Cult of quality
  * I told her I loved her when I married her. Provide closure to each task. Small tasks for frequent closure
  * The Elite Team. Allow and grant uniqueness.
  * On not breaking up the yankees.
  * A network model of team behavior. Managers are not part of the team. Occasional leaders inside the team
  * Selections from a Chinese menu. Do not have a uniform team

# V. It's supposed to be fun to work here

## 24\. Chaos and order

* Constructive reintroduction of small amounts of disorder 
  * Pilot projects. All projects as pilots, but limit experimentation
  * War games
  * Brainstorming
  * Provocative training experiences
  * Training, trips, conferences, celebrations, and retreats.

## 25\. Free electrons

* Some people should be left to work at what they want

## 26\. Holgar Dansk

* A "sleeping giant" can oppose any bad change

# VI. Son of Peopleware

## 27\. Teamicide revisited

* Those damn posters. Motivational posters tell obvious things people already know. It is demeaning
* Overtime: An unanticipated side effect. If someone is exent of overtime, it is even more damaging

## 28\. Competition

* Internal competition inhibits jell 
  * Prevents internal coaching
  * Can come from: 
    * Annual salary or merit reviews
    * Management by objectives
    * Praise of certain workers for extraordinary accomplishment
    * Awards, prizes, bonuses tied to performance
    * Performance measurement in almost any form
* Musical ensembles are better metaphors of good development teams than sport teams. Individual sport teams members can have differing valoration from the rest of the team

## 29\. Process improvement programs

* Standardized interfaces are good, standardized processes are not
* Goal is a good product, not building it efficiently
* Good products are risky projects, process improvement avoids risky projects
* Better teams do more complex projects, more risk

## 30\. Making change possible

* People fear change
* Degrees of fear to change
  * Blindly loyal (ask no questions)
  * Believers but questioners 
    * Skeptics (show me)
    * Passive observers (what's in it for me?)
    * Opposed (fear of change)
    * Opposed (fear of loss of power)
  * Militantly opposed (will undermine and destroy)

  Blindly loyal can abandon a change for a newer one. Only Believers but questioners can be allies to a change. Work with them to make change successful
* Celebrate the old system
* Phases of change
  * Introduce foreign element/catalyst
  * Chaos
  * Transforming idea (finding the "correct training"/correct way to adopt change)
  * Practice & Integration
  * New status quo
* People need to feel safe for change, there should be room for some failure

## 31\. Human capital

* Money spent of people is only lost if they leave
* Replacing someone is expensive

## 32\. Organizational learning

* Organizations can only learn if people stay for a long time
* Organizations learn when middle management works together without competition and without reporting to upper management

## 33\. The ultimate management sin is...

* Wasting people's time 
  * Being late for meetings, blocking meetings, inviting people who don't need to be there
  * Status reporting meetings
  * Early overstaffing (and leads to fragmenting time of people)

## 34\. The making of community

* Aristotelian politics is building communities, extending ethics to a group
* Creatin