If your company's goal is to become fast, responsive, and agile, more efficiency is not the answer--you need more slack.

Why is it that today's superefficient organizations are ailing? Tom DeMarco, a leading management consultant to both Fortune 500 and up-and-coming companies, reveals a counterintuitive principle that explains why efficiency efforts can slow a company down. That principle is the value of slack, the degree of freedom in a company that allows it to change. Implementing slack could be as simple as adding an assistant to a department and letting high-priced talent spend less...

Bring together a wonderfully varied mix of characters in a once-grand Maine island summer cottage, leave them to their own devices over the course of a long, idyllic summer in the late 1940s, and you have all the ingredients for a fine comedy of manners. Author Tom DeMarco starts with a simple little love story, weaves in tantalizing details of the old mansion's not totally respectable history, and adds a hint of gentle satire to create a novel that is touching, memorable, and deliciously entertaining.

-This book is written from a powerfully felt, personal perspective: that software construction is primarily a problem-solving activity; that all problem-solving requires creativity; that software problem-solving is deeply complex, perhaps more deeply complex than any other activity; and that, therefore, software problem-solving requires the ultimate in creativity.- --Robert L. Glass, from the Preface In Software Creativity 2.0, acclaimed author Robert L. Glass explores a critical, yet strangely neglected, question: What is the role of creativity in software engineering and computer...

Tom DeMarco beschreibt in seinem Roman über Projektmanagement lebhaft und anschaulich die Prinzipien und Absurditäten, die die Produktivität eines Software-Entwicklungsteams beeinflussen. Mr. Tompkins, ein von einem Telekommunikationsriesen soeben entlassener Manager, hat die Aufgabe, sechs Softwareprodukte zu entwickeln. Dazu teilt Tompkins die ihm zur Verfügung stehende gigantische Entwicklungsmannschaft in achtzehn Teams auf - drei für jedes Produkt. Die Teams sind unterschiedlich groß und setzen verschiedene Methoden ein. Sie befinden sich im Wettlauf miteinander und haben einen...