Tom DeMarco Quotes

16 quotes in 202 categories

• There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back.
• Computer system analysis is like child-rearing; you can do grievous damage, but you cannot ensure success.
• Get the right people. Then no matter what all else you might do wrong after that, the people will save you. That's what management is…
• Some of the most flowery praise you hear on the subject of teams is only hypocrisy. Managers learn to talk a good game about teams…
• 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…
• Product quality has almost nothing to do with defects or their lack.
• The fundamental response to change is not logical, but emotional.
• The purpose of a team is not goal attainment but goal alignment.
• The pathology of setting a deadline to the earliest articulable date essentially guarantees that the schedule will be missed.
• Quality is free, but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it.
• 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.
• The manager's function is not to make people work, it is to make it possible for people to work.
• First law of Bad Management: If something isn't working, do more of it.
• The QSM Software Almanac is an invaluable resource. It establishes a norm for software projects, including best of class, worst of class and averages. In…
• You can't control what you can't measure
• Craziness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

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