Peopleware

is an excellent book by Tim Lister and Tom DeMarco (isbn 0-932633-43-9). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages. I know I've snippeted this book before, but I read it again and a really good book deserves a repeat snippet.

Development is inherently different from production.

Most organizations don't set out consciously to kill teams. They just act that way.

The trade-off between price and quality does not exist in Japan. Rather, the idea that high quality brings on cost reduction is widely accepted. [Tajima and Matsubara]

The manager's function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.

The trick isn't in the technology; it's in the changing of habits.

An age-old pattern of interior space is one that has a smooth "intimacy gradient" as you move toward the interior.

Employee turnover costs about twenty percent of all manpower expense. But that's only the visible cost of turnover. There's an ugly invisible cost that can be far worse.

It's only the right to be wrong that makes you free.

The structure of a team is a network, not a hierarchy.

Everyone quickly understands that the presence of the posters is a sure sign of the absence of hard work and talent.

The more you improve the way you go about your work, the harder the work will be.

The manager of a large project in Minneapolis has refused to move his people to the new quarters. ("New in this case just meant smaller and noisier.) Administrators were simply stunned at his refusal; they had never considered the possibility.