What we are looking for is managers who are awake enough to alter the world as they find it, to make it harmonize with what they and their people are trying to accomplish. — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
“More important than any gimmick you introduce is a change in attitude. People must learn that it’s okay sometimes not to answer their phones,… — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
“We have become so obsessed with getting rid of people who are burdened with the characterization overhead that we have ended up with organizations… — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
The more you focus on control, the more likely you're working on a project that's striving to deliver something of relatively minor value. — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
“Internal competition has the direct effect of making coaching difficult or impossible.” — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
“The most obvious defensive management ploys are prescriptive Methodologies (“My people are too dumb to build systems without them” ) and technical interference by… — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
“The need for uniformity is a sign of insecurity on the part of management. Strong managers don’t care when team members cut their hair… — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
“If you’ve got decent people under you, there is probably nothing you can do to improve their chances of success more dramatically than to… — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
“While this [10 to 1] productivity differential among programmers is understandable, there is also a 10 to 1 difference in productivity among software organizations” — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
Training is practice doing a new task much more slowly than an expert would do it. — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image
If you find yourself concentrating on the technology rather than the sociology, you're like the vaudeville character who loses his keys on a dark… — Tom DeMarco Copy Share Image