Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies

is the title of an excellent book by Tom DeMarco, Peter Hruschka, Tim Lister, Steve McMenamin, James Robertson and Suzanne Robertson. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

On most development projects, time is a scarcer resource than money.

Film critics believe they can be successful even if the project they are on is a failure.

Perfection is not expected; delivery is.

Whenever people get together and break rank and responsibility, the organization gets a little healthier.

Organizational lines exists for control and decision-making. They don't usually exist to accelerate work throughput.

Reality is king.

An abundance of information creates a paucity of attention.

Suppressing bad news can turn solvable problems into unsolvable problems.

The result of this misdirected civility is deep mediocrity.

Whenever you hear "I don't know," you hear a declaration of trust.