Book Review : Peopleware

Project failure is caused by human errors. Very few projects (if any) failed because they used PHP instead of Ruby. Projects fail because people fail.

Peopleware is about these teams. Your team. Why it might be failing it's current project. And mostly what it can do to succeed.

This time I decided to resume the book using a mindmap. I really liked the experience and will definitely give it another go. It allowed me to write down ideas and reorganize them in a coherent picture of what I learned from the book. I believe it will help me remember the main ideas as well.

(Click to view larger image)

"Quality is free, but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it."

You can find the points I found most important in the mindmap. Still, I can't keep silent on one point : quality matters. A lot. Even more than you think. A team that aims to be the best tends to be happy. The turnover rate is lower. On the other hand, asking the team to lower the quality leads to disaster - demoralization, lack of purpose...

Build a cult of quality in your team. Pay attention to details. About everything. Strive to make everything must be perfect. Doing so will push the entire team to aim higher and higher.