About the Book
This is the digital version of the printed book (Copyright © 2008).
Adrenaline junkies, dead fish, project sluts, true believers, Lewis and Clark, template zombies . . .
Most developers, testers, and managers on IT projects are pretty good at recognizing patterns of behavior and gut-level hunches, as in, “I sense that this project is headed for disaster.”
But it has always been more difficult to transform these patterns and hunches into a usable form, something a team can debate, refine, and use. Until now.
In Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies, the six principal consultants of The Atlantic Systems Guild present the patterns of behavior they most often observe at the dozens of IT firms they transform each year, around the world.
The result is a quick-read guide to identifying nearly ninety typical scenarios, drawing on a combined one-hundred-and-fifty years of project management experience. Project by project, you’ll improve the accuracy of your hunches and your ability to act on them.
The patterns are presented in an easy-reference format, with names designed to ease communication with your teammates. In just a few words, you can describe what’s happening on your project. Citing the patterns of behavior can help you quickly move those above and below you to the next step on your project. You’ll find classic patterns such as these:
News Improvement
Management by Mood Ring
Piling On
Rattle Yer Dags
Natural Authority
Food++
Fridge Door
and more than eighty more!
Not every pattern will be evident in your organization, and not every pattern is necessarily good or bad. However, you’ll find many patterns that will apply to your current and future assignments, even in the most ambiguous circumstances. When you assess your situation and follow your next hunch, you'll have the collective wisdom of six world-class consultants at your side.
Table of Contents:
Introduction 3
1: Adrenaline Junkies 6
2: Rattle Yer Dags 9
3: Dead Fish 12
4: Happy Clappy Meetings 14
5: Nanny 16
6: Referred Pain 19
7: Mañana 22
8: Eye Contact 25
9: Management By Mood Ring 28
10: True Believer 32
11: Lease Your Soul 34
12: System Development Lemming Cycle 36
13: No Bench 38
14: Face Time 40
15: I Gave You a Chisel. Why Aren’t You Michelangelo? 43
16: Dashboards 45
17: Endless Huddle 49
18: Young Pups and Old Dogs 52
19: Film Critics 55
20: One Throat to Choke 58
Interlude: Project-Speak 61
21: Soviet Style 63
22: Natural Authority 66
23: The Too-Quiet Office 68
24: The White Line 69
25: Silence Gives Consent 72
26: Straw Man 74
27: Counterfeit Urgency 77
28: Time Removes Cards from Your Hand 79
29: Lewis & Clark 82
30: Short Pencil 85
31: Rhythm 87
32: The Overtime Predictor 89
33: Poker Night 92
34: False Quality Gates 95
35: Testing Before Testing 99
36: Cider House Rules 101
37: Talk Then Write 104
38: Project Sluts 107
39: Atlas 109
40: Everyone Wears Clothes for a Reason 112
41: Peer Preview 114
42: Snorkeling and Scuba Diving 117
43: It’s Always the Goddamned Interfaces 120
44: The Blue Zone 122
45: News Improvement 124
46: Telling the Truth Slowly 127
47: Practicing Endgame 130
48: The Music Makers 133
49: Journalists 136
50: The Empty Chair 138
51: My Cousin Vinny 140
52: Feature Soup 143
53: Data Qualty 146
54: Ben 148
55: Miss Manners 150
56: Undivided Attention 152
57: “There’s No Crying in Baseball!” 155
58: Cool Hand Luke 157
59: Shipping On-Time, Every Time 159
60: Food++ 161
61: Orphaned Deliverables 163
62: Hidden Beauty 166
63: I Don’t Know 169
64: Children of Lake Wobegon 172
65: Co-Education 176
66: Seelenverwandtschaft 179
67: Phillips Head 182
68: Predicting Innovation 184
69: Marilyn Munster 187
Interlude: The Cutting Room Floor 190
70: Brownie in Motion 192
71: Loud and Clear 194
72: Safety Valve 197
73: Babel 200
74: Surprise! 202
75: Fridge Door 204
76: The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow 207
77: Piling On 211
78: Seasons for Change 213
79: Paper Mill 216
80: Offshore Follies 218
81: War Rooms 221
82: What Smell? 223
83: Lessons Unlearned 225
84: Sanctity of the Half-Baked Idea 228
85: Leakage 230
86: Template Zombies 233
Photo Credits 235
Pattern Index 237
About the Guild 240
About the Author :
Tom DeMarco is a principal of The Atlantic Systems Guild and the author or coauthor of nine books on subjects ranging from development methods to organizational function and dysfunction, as well as two novels and a book of short stories. His consulting practice focuses primarily on expert witness work, balanced against the occasional project and team consulting assignment. For the past three years, he has taught undergraduate ethics at the University of Maine. He lives with his wife, Sally O. Smyth, in Camden, Maine.
Peter Hruschka, a principal of The Atlantic Systems Guild based in Aachen, Germany, is widely regarded as one of the fathers of CASE and modeling tools. He has taught and consulted on system and software development methods since the 1970s, and has worked in more than thirty countries on three continents. He is author of more than a dozen books, mostly in German, dealing with software architecture, requirements engineering, and agile methods. When he is not working, he is usually found with his wife, Monika, in some of the most scenic parts of the world, trying to hit little white balls into holes that are far too small.
Tim Lister divides his time among consulting, teaching, and writing. He is coauthor, with Tom DeMarco, of Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects (Dorset House Publishing, 2003) and Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, originally published by Dorset House in 1987 and now in its third edition (Addison-Wesley, 2013). Based in Manhattan, he is a principal of The Atlantic Systems Guild; a member of the IEEE, the ACM, and the Cutter IT Trends Council; and a Cutter Fellow.
Steve McMenamin is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Hawaiian Electric Co., and a principal of The Atlantic Systems Guild, based in Southern California. Before joining Hawaiian Electric, he held executive positions at Borland Software Corp., BEA Systems, Inc., and Southern California Edison. He is also coauthor of Essential Systems Analysis (Prentice Hall, 1984).
James Robertson and Suzanne Robertson have helped hundreds of companies improve their requirements techniques and move into the fast lane of system development. Their courses and seminars on requirements, analysis, and design are widely praised for their innovative approach. The Robertsons are London-based principals of The Atlantic Systems Guild, specializing in the human dimensions of complex system building. They are also coauthors of Complete Systems Analysis (Dorset House, 1994) and Mastering the Requirements Process, Third Edition (Addison-Wesley, 2012), and are the developers of the Volere requirements techniques.
