Tom DeMarco QUOTES

2 " Good management is the lifeblood of the healthy corporate body. Getting rid of it to save cost is like losing weight by giving blood. "

― Tom DeMarco , Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

4 " Managers who inspire extraordinary loyalty from their people tend to be highly charismatic, humorous, good-looking, and tall. So, by all means, strive to be those things. If you don't feel able to improve any of those factors very much, you might consider holding on to your people by designing a little slack into their lives. "

― Tom DeMarco , Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

6 " When stress is the problem, slack is the solution. "

― Tom DeMarco , Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

8 " You're efficient when you do something with minimum waste. & you're effective when you're doing the right something."

"...the degree of freedom required to effect change. Slack is the natural enemy of efficiency & vise versa."

"...slack represents operational capacity sacrificed in the interest of long term health."

"Imagine one of those puzzle games consisting of 8 numbered tiles in a box, with one empty space, so you can slide them around one at a time. The objective is to shuffle the tiles into numerical order. That empty space is the equivalent of slack. If you remove it, the game is technically more efficient, but something is lost. Without the open space, there is no further possibility of moving tiles at all. The layout is optimal as it is, but if time proves otherwise, there is no way to change it."

"Having a little bit of wiggle room allows us to respond to changing circumstances, to experiment, & to do things that might not work."

→ time, money, people on job, or even expectations
→ Not having slack is taxing. Scarcity weighs on our minds and uses up energy that could go toward doing the task at hand better. It amplifies the impact of failures & unintended consequences.
→ Slack allows us to handle the inevitable shocks & surprise of life.
→ Slack is the time when reinvention happens. It is time when you are not 100% busy doing the operational business of your firm. Slack is the time when you are 0% busy. Slack at all levels is necessary to make the organization work effectively & to grow. It is the lubricant of change. Good companies excel in creative use of slack. & bad ones only obsess about removing it.
→ Only when we are 0% busy can we step back & look at the bigger picture of what we're doing. Slack allows room for that...to think ahead.
→ We are more productive when we don't try to be productive all the time.
→ Being comfortable with sometimes being 0% busy means we think about whether we're doing the right thing → Effectiveness
→ "The secret to top performance is to always be a little underemployed; you waste years by not being able to waste hours. Those seemingly wasted hours are necessary to figure out if you're headed in the right direction. "

― Tom DeMarco , Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

10 " Any vigorous competition will entail at least two elements: offense and defense. Offense is the effort you put into scoring against your opponents, and defense is the effort you apply to stop them from scoring against you. Those who suggest that "a little healthy competition can't hurt" are thinking only of the offense part....

The offense component of internal competition is problematic, but the defense component is always injurious. When peer managers play defense against each other (try to stop each other from scoring), they are engaging in anticooperation. "

― Tom DeMarco , Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

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

― Tom DeMarco , Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

14 " Learning is limited by an organization’s ability to keep its people. "

― Tom DeMarco , Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

16 " Although your staff may be exposed to the message “work longer and harder” while they’re at the office, they’re getting a very different message at home. The message at home is, “Life is passing you by. Your laundry is piling up in the closet, your babies are uncuddled, your spouse is starting to look elsewhere. There is only one time around on this merry-go-round called life, only one shot at the brass ring. And if you use your life up on C++ . . . "

― Tom DeMarco , Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

18 " People under time pressure don’t think faster.”    —Tim Lister Think rate is fixed. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you can’t pick up the pace of thinking. "

― Tom DeMarco , Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

20 " When companies can’t invent, it’s usually because their people are too damn busy. "

― Tom DeMarco , Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency