Anandasubramanian > Anandasubramanian's Quotes

“It’s easy (and fair) to blame lousy management on lousy managers. But it’s not enough. It’s also necessary to blame the people who allow themselves to be managed so badly.”
― Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

“People who feel untrusted have little inclination to bond together into a cooperative team.”
― Tom DeMarco, Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams

“The purpose of a team is not goal attainment but goal alignment.”
― Tom DeMarco, Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams

“Learning is limited by an organization’s ability to keep its people.”
― Tom DeMarco, Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams

“The manager’s function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.”
― Tom DeMarco, Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams

“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.”
― Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

“Ownership of the standard should be in the hands of those who do the work.”
― Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

“Lack of power is a great excuse for failure, but sufficient power is never a necessary condition of leadership. There is never sufficient power. In fact, it is success in the absence of sufficient power that defines leadership.”
― Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

“When companies can’t invent, it’s usually because their people are too damn busy.”
― Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

“Rooms without a view are like prisons for the people who have to stay in them.”
― Tom DeMarco, Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

“Very successful companies have never struck me as particularly busy; in fact, they are, as a group, rather laid-back. Energy is evident in the workplace, but it's not the energy tinged with fear that comes from being slightly behind on everything.”
― Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

“When the office environment is frustrating enough, people look for a place to hide out. They book the conference rooms or head for the library or wander off for coffee and just don’t come back. No, they are not meeting for secret romance or plotting political coups; they are hiding out to work. The good news here is that your people really do need to feel the accomplishment of work completed. They will go to great extremes to make that happen.”
― Tom DeMarco, Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

“Risk management is not the same as worrying about your project.”
― Tom DeMarco, Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects

“A commander didn’t have the luxury of turning down systems that increased battlefield effectiveness just because they made him personally uncomfortable.”
― David VanDyke, Conquest and Empire