Management Quote by Tom DeMarco

““The best predictor of how much work a knowledge worker will accomplish is not the hours that he or she spends, but the days. The twelve-hour days don't accomplish any more than the eight-hour days. Overtime is a wash.””

Tom DeMarco

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Management

More by Tom DeMarco

“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

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“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

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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

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Product quality has almost nothing to do with defects or their lack.

Tom DeMarco

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“Internal competition has the direct effect of making coaching difficult or impossible.”

Tom DeMarco

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“People under time pressure don’t work better—they just work faster.”

Tom DeMarco

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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Training is practice doing a new task much more slowly than an expert would do it.

Tom DeMarco

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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

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Explore all 56 Tom DeMarco quotes

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