Many people have heard the quote that the best software developers
are 10 times more productive than the worst. Whilst I was reading the
course material for my course in project management I came across the
source for this statistic:
"Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams" by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, 2nd edition, Dorset House, 1999
Reading this book you get to see the rest of the results:
- the best developers are 2.5 times more productive than the average - so there are a lot of very unproductive developers out there
- the best developers are in development teams that are 10 times more productive than the worst teams - it's not just about individuals, but who they work with, who they work for and in what kind of environment they work
- people are more productive when they have fewer distractions - obvious, but lost on many managers
- Parkinson's Law was a joke about a bureaucracy, not a general observation
- higher pressure does not improve productivity and/or quality
After
just reading a couple of pages I came to the conclusion that this book
should be made a mandatory read before anyone takes on a new position as
a manager - including, or especially, several of my previous managers!
I've only read a few chapters, but my enthusiam shows no bounds.
